Rift
by scians
Summary: "The ninety-fourth reset. That's when he started to unravel—or at least, that was when you started noticing." You've never succumbed to genocide, but still reset in the hopes of saving Asriel . . . at the cost of losing Sans. When resetting time is no longer a factor and events don't go as planned, can you find a way to save everyone? TW: depression, suicide, self-harm, language
1. No More

_A/N: Version of events where Frisk has never succumbed to genocide, but still resets in the hopes of saving Asriel._

 _This chapter and the next can be read as one-shots._

 _TW: depression, suicide, self-harm, language._

 _Enjoy._

* * *

The ninety-fourth reset, you think. That's when he started to unravel—or at least, that was when you started noticing.

It was nothing alarming at first. His comic sans script just left him a little more slowly than usual, flicking characters one by one into your ears as if they couldn't be bothered to form words. His heavy, faded eyes pierced you as he spoke, well past you into a world beyond. Weariness, you understand now. _Odd_ was all you thought then. Nothing should be so different. Going back in time meant starting over, right? Maybe you were the one who was tired, projecting your emotions onto this skeleton who could be feeling anything under his frozen mask of a grin. It wouldn't surprise you. How many times had you tried in vain to save that damn flower child, over and over and over?

Then, more and more frequently, you caught his empty stare into the cavern ceiling above, into the hollows of his palms below. You noticed his absence, mentally, physically. He was always there when you started, sure, there to greet you with soft phalanges outstretched. Upon progressing, however, his stations each began to yawn with a Sans-shaped hole, haunting in their four-foot-tall abyss.

A telescope unmanned. A shortcut untraveled. _A hall without a judge._

When face to face with Asgore and Asriel to follow, he hadn't even answered Papyrus' call to save you. That tall, cheerful spindle of a skeleton hadn't seen him, he said, not since you'd passed his puzzles in Snowdin. It was as if Sans had vanished. _Into dust,_ you shuddered to think.

At first, you didn't dare ask if something were wrong. He stubbornly kept to the same script, looked trepidly away from you if your face showed even an iota of concern. If something were wrong, he didn't want you to know it. It took a timeline of his complete absence after Snowdin to rile your courage.

You met him outside the Ruins as always. He hardly bothered to hide the whoopee cushion from you anymore. Or had he ever? You saw his eyes shift discreetly to the number on your arm, the counter for your reset you drew at every start. 99. If it meant something to him, he didn't let it show.

You played along with Papyrus' puzzles under Sans' watchful but ever distancing eye sockets. Before he had the chance to disappear, as he had the last time you crossed the bridge to Snowdin, you sought him out at the bottom of the hill. You found him leaning beside the wall of eyes, staring almost forlornly to the faraway, warmly lit cabin beyond the cliff's edge. At least … that was what you had assumed he was looking at. Now, you're not so sure.

Before he could say his usual, you had taken his hand in yours and, as softly as you could … you asked.

He didn't answer you. He didn't have to. You'd never forget the look on his face, as if you should already know, as if you were to blame. Hollow-eyed. Lightless. Dead.

You'd never seen his smile fall. Its sudden absence frightened you more than anything he had ever said or done before. You wished you could go back to thinking it was impossible for the short skeleton jokester to do anything _but_ smile, but the facade had been undone. The implications dragged your soul to the ground, as if he'd cast it in blue … and in a way, he had.

Just as suddenly as it disappeared, his grin flitted to life again, albeit a fraction of what it once was. Now, it was something faded, something weak. He rested a hand on your head, ran his fingers more gently through your hair than you'd ever thought possible. It was the touch of someone who knew you, someone who loved you, someone who had walked this entire path alongside you, silently, and _remembered._

"doesn't matter," he said, so quietly it hurt. "don't worry 'bout me, kid."

He took a shortcut away before you had the chance to say a word, and you wouldn't see him again that entire timeline.

The reset following, you traveled your usual path through the ruins, heart hammering. You had so many burning questions about how much he remembered, about his feelings, why he'd never told you. Once again shrouded in the winter white forest of the Underground, you trudged through knee-high snow toward Papyrus' "fence." You paused at the edge, waited for that familiar voice, that rusty baritone asking you to turn around and greet him properly.

But nobody came.

You turned anyway. Sans was nowhere to be seen. The branch along the path far behind you remained unsnapped, and no footprints followed but your own. You waited for minutes on end before realizing he wasn't going to show, not this time.

You continued onward. Past the wide bars of the gate, you found Papyrus, standing akimbo between Sans' sentry post and the conveniently shaped lamp. He scratched his head thoughtfully, perplexedly. He knew something wasn't right. Laziness was typical behavior of Sans, were it any other day, but … why was today significant, again?

"Papyrus?" you called without really thinking.

He turned to you and blinked. "OH!' he said. "HELLO, THERE! MY APOLOGIES. THE GREAT PAPYRUS WAS LOST IN A GRUELING BATTLE OF THOUGHT!" His gaze swung like a pendulum between you and the out-of-place device. "HAS ANYONE EVER TOLD YOU YOU LOOK LIKE A LAMP?"

It occurred to you then, all at once, that Papyrus didn't recognize what you were. Without Sans here to _enlighten_ him, he would have never guessed you were the human he so desperately sought to capture.

"Have you seen Sans?" you asked.

"YOU KNOW MY BROTHER?"

"We're … friends." You frowned to consider that statement.

"HE'S SUPPOSED TO BE HERE ON DUTY, BUT …" He trailed off with confusion as if his next thought didn't make sense. "LAZYBONES MUST STILL BE ASLEEP. HMM."

"Can … could we go check on him?" you asked cautiously. "I-I really need to talk to him."

"OF COURSE!" Papyrus nearly shrieked, pointing skyward as if it were his own idea. "MAYBE YOU CAN GET HIM OUT OF BED! IF YOU'RE WILLING TO PUT UP WITH HIS INCESSANT BOONDOGGLING LONG ENOUGH TO BE HIS FRIEND, YOU MUST BE QUITE SPECIAL INDEED!"

The statement hung heavy like a weight in your red soul.

"FOLLOW ME, LAMP CHILD!" Papyrus instructed and ran off before you could think about it much further.

You had to jog to keep up with Papyrus' naturally long-legged strides. In shorter time than you'd ever managed, you found yourself in Snowdin Town, heading directly to the skeleton brothers' house. For good measure, Papyrus stuck his head into Grillby's as he passed. An eyebrow from the bartender flame, but no brother.

"SANS, YOU NUMBSKULL!" Papyrus shouted once inside their home. "WAKE UP! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING!"

Silence. Uneasiness twisted, slippery like an octopus in your stomach. You exchanged glances, but the Great Papyrus didn't seem unnerved in the slightest. He thumped up the stairs huffily. You followed at his heels.

Hammering on Sans' door yielded no results. It had always been locked in the past, but this seemed to be a non-issue to Papyrus. He only sighed, warned you to shield your eyes as he exposed the depravity of Sans' room. Beholding such filth would rob you of an irreclaimable innocence, he said. You smiled at him encouragingly, as you always did, but your eyes remained unguarded. When he pried open the door and flipped on the lights, you wished—you wished so hard—you had actually listened.

It was the normal mess you'd seen countless times before: the wad of blankets, the treadmill, a pile of trash where the perpetual tornado usually spun. None of this was of consequence to you, not now. At that moment, everything was tunneling away from the bedside, from the soft blue jacket, the black basketball shorts. They lay strewn across the mattress, dangling at the edge. Empty. No, you wish they were empty. Then, it could just be his laundry. No. Sprinkled among the clothing were heavy patches of a sparkling, silvery powder.

Papyrus staggered back to the banister, face twisted in an expression you'd never wanted to see. His hand jumped to his mouth, yours to the reset button. You'd never punched it faster in your life.

Lying once again among yellow flowers, you gasped under watery eyes. What … the actual … _fuck_. You breathed once, twice, three times. Steady now, heart.

Was this a fluke? You certainly hoped so. You hoped to god it wouldn't happen again, but you knew firsthand the fruits of crippling depression. Here you lay at the tail end of your own attempted suicide, albeit more than a hundred cycles ago. Following all the warning signs, Sans could have only done this to himself, and if that were true … he would probably try again.

You ran through the ruins faster than you thought possible. At Home, you begged Toriel fervently to take you to the Underground. Of course, she refused, but then you told her about the friend who would die without you, a comedian on the other side who liked to practice knock-knock jokes on ruin doors. When you described Sans that way, the way you knew she would understand, she opened the door for you but remained behind herself.

Sans failed to make his appearance once more, but you hoped you had only arrived too early. This time was different from the others, _so_ different. You'd never made it this far this fast. Through ice and bark and a few cheeky monsters, you met Papyrus just outside Snowdin. You grabbed his hand and rushed him back to his house with little explanation. Your urgency was enough for him, bless his heart.

But there was dust again. And again. And again. With each attempt, you became more efficient. You made it there faster every time, by milliseconds, seconds, minutes. Finally, you arrived just a fraction of an inch closer to success.

Or maybe he had hesitated.

You flung open his door, just in time to see his skeletal hands clenched around his own soul, ripping it in two like a paper valentine. Straight down the middle. He gasped once, then … nothing. There were no ribs to hold his breath, no mouth to pass it through. He shimmered away into a sickeningly beautiful pool of ash like mercury moonlight. Gone.

That time, and only that time, did you hear Papyrus scream.

You wondered if Sans knew you saw, and if so … would he let you get there in time? It didn't seem that way. Following this route, you were faster than ever before, and yet he was already that gut-wrenching pile of almost-glitter. You weren't sure you could race there any more quickly. After more than thirty tries, your determination was wearing thin. How could you help someone who wouldn't give you the chance?

You cried on your flowerbed, so long you knew you couldn't possibly make it in time. So you went through the motions, as usual, urgency lost, dragged along by Toriel's warm hand through puzzles and spiked mazes. When you found her again in the long hallway, hiding behind the pillar, you threw your arms around her and devolved into tears again.

She didn't understand. She thought you were scared, that the ruins were overwhelming, that you didn't want her to leave again. She promised that, although she had to leave you, she was only a phone call away.

Drying your eyes, you mechanically took the outdated cell phone outstretched to you. And then, at that moment, hope struck you with a lightning intensity so forceful you stood rooted to purple stone tiles. Was this it? Was this the lifeline you needed?

The moment Toriel disappeared to her errands, you forced your trembling thumbs to dial out a number you'd called so many times it felt natural, a number you shouldn't know but couldn't possibly forget. It rang only once.

"HELLO?"

"P-Papyrus?" you managed to choke out.

"NYES, THIS IS THE PHONE OF THE GREAT PAPYRUS! WHO MAY I ASK IS SPEAKING?"

"Uh." You froze. "You don't know me, but …"

"THAT'S ALL RIGHT! I CAN JUST GET TO KNOW YOU NOW! ALTHOUGH … THAT MAKES IT KIND OF WEIRD YOU HAVE MY PHONE NUMBER."

"I just dialed every number sequentially until I got yours," you sobbed and laughed together.

"THE MOST SENSIBLE WAY!"

"Papy, are you home right now?"

"I AM MAKING BREAKFASKETTI IN MY KITCHEN AS WE SPEAK!"

"I need you to go check on Sans."

"SANS?" He huffed. "I CAN TELL YOU MOST ASSUREDLY HE IS NAPPING IN HIS ROOM."

"Just check … please. I wanna talk to him."

"WELL … ALL RIGHT."

There was a long pause. You could imagine him heading up the stairs to his brother's room, skipping steps. Then, you heard a knock.

"SANS?"

You held your breath.

"SANS, THERE'S SOMEONE ON THE PHONE WHO …"

You heard clattering. A second later, you realized his phone had hit the floor. Your heart fell after it, so fast you almost fainted.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" you heard distantly through the receiver. "STOP THAT! STOP THAT RIGHT NOW! SANS!"

There was deathly, terrible silence. You almost thought the call had dropped. Then, muffled sobs shuddered through the speaker into your ear. You sank dizzily to your knees.

A few minutes later, Papyrus picked up the phone again. "I'm sorry, stranger," he said, once he realized you were still there. His words left him more quietly than you'd ever heard. "Sans is …"

The reset button was already hovering ahead of you.

"He's not …"

You punched it before he could finish, so hard a crack ran down the middle.

… What?

You gaped. You'd seen Asgore destroy your mercy button countless times before, but never had you thought this could apply to a reset. It shattered like a mirror but did not truly break. As the scene transitioned back in time, more slowly than you'd ever felt, your shock bled away into rage. This was the cause, wasn't it? This power over time, this tool with which you had driven your dearest friend to endless suicide. The cycle had to end. It couldn't go on like this.

Golden flowers gathered at your feet, solidifying from a past now present. The cracked reset button began fading away into the dark. _No more._ You took your trusty stick in both hands and steadied it firmly above your head. _No more._ You brought it down on one wide, powerful arc. _No more._

Everything warped in on itself with a permanence you'd never noticed was missing. Existence shuddered, settled into place like a puzzle piece. You panted as if you'd run a mile. Your surroundings appeared the same as any other beginning, but something about the air felt crisper, truer.

The reset button was gone.

You couldn't linger. This time had to _count._

In the next room, Flowey stared you down. He trembled from the tips of his petals to his roots. Wide eyes, bared fangs.

"What did you do?" he asked, voice hushed.

You rushed past him and ducked a barrage of "friendliness pellets" without looking back.

"WHAT DID YOU DO?!" he screamed after you.

The words echoed down the hall, where you nearly ran straight into Toriel. She stopped dead to see you, but you wasted no time begging for her cell phone, even before she could introduce herself. Thankfully, the boss monster handed it over to you, though expressly confused who you might call among a monster-only network.

You dialed Papyrus' number with speed demon thumbs. His response was similar to last time, but you wouldn't let him get that far. You shouted over his dialogue with an urgency that would make Undyne proud.

"Sans is in trouble!" you said. "He's going to hurt himself and you need to _stop him!_ "

"WHAT?" the great skeleton barked, though you could sense the trepidation in his voice.

"STOP HIM! PAPYRUS, PLEASE! _YOU HAVE TO HURRY!_ "

For a heart-stopping moment, you heard nothing. You hoped he thundered up the stairs, hoped he swung the door open without knocking. Then, the phone dropped again, clapped and clattered to the ground—the same as before.

Your grip on the phone trembled. No. No, no, no, no, no. There was no turning back now, and if Sans … if he …

You cradled your head in your hands. Stars, what had you done?

Your attention sparked back to life when shouting suddenly fuzzed through the receiver, followed by the sound of rustling. A struggle? You listened intently. Your fingers twined around the locks of hair on your head, clutching them as if they were the only thing keeping you sane. You prayed to a god you only remembered in hopeless times.

Then, at long last, you heard crying again, but this time it wasn't from Papyrus. Your heart skipped into your throat.

You could hear the phone shifting, someone lifting it off the floor. Sans' distant tears became clearer, but it wasn't his voice that spoke to you.

"I'VE STOPPED HIM," said Papyrus, solemnly. "HE WON'T BE HURTING HIMSELF ANYTIME SOON."

Your only acknowledgment came as a sob of relief. Toriel's hand found your shoulder uncertainly, and you buried your face into her tunic. A pocket of silence enveloped you, but neither you nor Papyrus ended the call.

"Whoever you are," said the latter finally, so gently it sent shivers down your spine, "thank you."

You nodded before you remembered it meant nothing on the phone. "I want to go see him," you whispered.

"Of course."

When you finally arrived at the brothers' house in Snowdin, you found the front door unlocked and the entrance to Sans' room ajar. Spaghetti was burning on the stove; you turned off the gas and slid the pot to another node. As you climbed the stairs, your fear escalated more and more with every step. What if something had happened in the long hour it took you to get here?

Standing framed in posts and lintel, you stopped. The waterfall found its way out your eyes.

On the bed, Sans rested still and staring at nothing, cheek pressed to the chest of Papyrus' battle body. _Alive._ His eyes were empty, dark sockets flushed blue from crying, though no tears fell now. His fingers curled around the tail end of Papyrus' scarf like a child. His smile was gone.

Papyrus held him there wordlessly, running a gloved hand back and forth across his back. His soothing touch never ceased for a second, even when he turned to acknowledge you with a feeble smile. He watched you drag your feet to the bedside.

"Sans," you breathed shakily.

Pupils slowly illuminated inside his eye sockets. They stared at you a long, long time, devoid of emotion. You reached out a shaking hand to his cheekbone. When you touched him, it was as if you'd only breathed and his fence of leaves fell down around him. He leaned into your palm, face torn by the most broken expression you'd ever seen.

You couldn't help yourself then. You launched yourself into his arms, tears flooding over into the warm blue of his jacket. You cried like the child you were, loudly, unrestrained. He held you, and Papyrus held you both.

"I'm sorry," you wept, over and over. "I'm so sorry."

Sans ran his fingers through your hair as he had that day and so many days before the last time you truly saw him alive. His head dropped to rest on yours.

"asked you not to worry 'bout me, kid," he whispered.

Maybe an hour later, Papyrus left you to go on patrol, under the condition you watch Sans like a Loox. He asked you to call if you needed anything— _anything—_ but if he should encounter a human, there would be no guarantees, "so please be responsible."

"he doesn't know you're a human, huh," said Sans with the genuine shadow of a smile.

You shook your head and grinned.

As the two of you lay together on his bed, facing each other like sleepover friends exchanging secrets, you conducted a long overdue conversation.

Sans confessed he hadn't been completely aware of the resets to start. It was a nagging déjà vu at the back of his head, a sense, a number. Over time, however, the more they happened, the more he remembered. What had once been a hunch became a nightmarish reality, knowing he would never see more than a day on the surface before everything was pulled back to square one. It nibbled away at him until his sense of purpose dissolved to nothing. He admitted to killing himself once or twice farther into the timeline, in those runs you failed to see him after Snowdin or Waterfall. As messed up as it was, the act made him feel he had recovered some semblance of control.

"i tried to hold out," he said of those moments. He tapped your wrist, where you'd failed to write a number. "wanted to give you till 100, at least."

"Why didn't you tell me?" you asked.

He barely brushed the backs of his fingers against yours in want of your hand, but too afraid to ask. "i trust you," he said. "y'know? to do the right thing. didn't want to fuck up whatever you had in mind by acting off-script. it had to be for a good reason, right? everything you do is for a good reason."

Neither of you spoke for several excruciatingly long seconds.

"at my worst, i started to wonder, though," he said. "is this just some game to you? running through everything over and over just to relive the _undergolden_ days or something like that. but that's a pretty dumb thought … right?" His eyes hollowed out, as you knew them to do when especially serious. "why'd you do it, kid?"

You stared back thoughtfully. His phalanges still rested back to back with yours, and it wasn't good enough for you, or for him. You threaded your fingers around his. His eye-lights returned and focused on their knots and ties.

"Asriel," you muttered. "I came back for Asriel."

"the dreemurr kid?" After a moment of thought, Sans seemed to understand. He smiled, a weak little curve of a thing you hated for its lacking but loved for its sincerity. "not satisfied until everyone's saved, huh," he said miserably. His words shattered apart near the end, and he broke down into tears again.

You hadn't expected that. As your thumbs failed to end the stream of water from his eyes, however, you realized why, just moments before he spelled it out for you.

"even if you keep resetting until the timelines fold in on each other … frisk … i can't imagine a clean way to save his soul. and if you keep trying … _god …_ i'm at my limit, kid. i-i'm at m-my … i can't do it. it's me or him, you know that? it's m-me or …"

He curled in on himself, broken.

Shame washed over you. Your ability to reset had twisted into something of a god complex, given you the illusion of immortality, of inconsequence. You could have tried to save Asriel forever until your determination ran dry and your guilt was assuaged. Over the course of these last few resets, however, you'd come to understand that this crusade hadn't come free. It was the salvation of one, hand in hand with the destruction of another. You had run Sans into the ground for the sake of lifting Flowey to the surface.

He didn't have to say it. He didn't have to convince you. You'd made your decision when you smashed that reset button into oblivion.

You wriggled closer, wrapped your arms around him tightly. His trembling shoulders heaved in your small grasp with every sob. You lay there a long time, thinking. Then, you tucked your head over his and pressed your lips to his temple.

"But I already chose."

"yeah …" he said, as if resigned to his fate. "yeah, i guess it only makes sense that …"

"I chose you."

He froze suddenly, stiff as a board in your embrace. He lifted eye lights like needle points to yours. "you … what?"

You smiled sadly, and by the look on his face, he knew it was more than a statement.

"frisk, what did you do?"

You told him. _Everything._ As he listened, a million expressions passed his face: happy, sad, confused, surprised…. It was the most unguarded you'd ever seen him, and it was refreshing. You wished it could always be like this.

"why?" he asked finally, though his voice left him considerably lighter. He scooted back just a little farther to look at you properly. "why all that … for me? i'm pretty _small_ , all things considered. side character in your life's story and all that."

You shook your head disapprovingly. He frowned.

"kid. you tried _so hard_ for asriel. i watched you. a hundred or so resets? remember? and still, you … you threw all that effort away? all your determination addin' up to nothin'?"

"I'm determined to save someone else, now."

He blinked, at a loss for words.

"And … there's still the future." You smiled ruefully. "Even if I only have one shot."

A few lingering tears trickled down his cheeks. He smiled, the largest most genuine thing you'd ever seen cross his face for you. He squeezed your hands, both of them, and buried his eyes behind their knuckles. You felt new tears, different tears.

"if you've got room in your dimensional box for a bag of bones and a few dumb jokes …" he said gently, "kid … i'll do everything i can to make sure this one timeline … is the _best_ timeline of your life."

* * *

 _A/N: Thinking about either doing a Sans POV, or using all this self-indulgent maudlin as a starter to something else. Thinking that, after Frisk destroys the reset button for his sake, Sans helps the kid find a way to both save Flowey and free the Underground. Thoughts?_


	2. Eclipse

_**A/N:** Sans POV of the previous chapter. While you can technically skip this, I **highly recommend** reading it. The chapter gives some additional context to Sans' situation moving forward, as well as the nature of his and Frisk's relationship._

 _08/2018: Uhhh . . . I reworked this? I think I overcooked it before. Anyway, should be more fluid, less maudlin. If you miss the old version PM me and I'll send it to you. Honestly, though, I don't think there's anything to miss here._

 _Enjoy!_

 _Chapter TW: depression, suicide, self-harm, language, uh . . . vomiting? Not excessively, though, I promise._

* * *

They were all lucky, not knowing what it felt like.

Wrenching through time and space, bending backward like a rubber band past its means … Vertigo. Nausea. A migraine of its worst incarnation.

Sans had always felt helpless in these moments. Not as if he had any control of the waking world, either, but the act of resetting just about crushed his ribs like a snake. If only he could rip out his soul and leave it behind where it belonged … but the timeline always scratched away from him, as sharp and irreparable as shattered glass.

His bedroom materialized around him and soon he plummeted into life again with just a little of himself left behind. His body shook because it knew, deep down, this wasn't the mind it had started with.

Sickness rose like a tidal wave in his stomach, raced like snails down his spine. He rolled feverishly out of bed into a wad of blankets and scrambled dizzily to his neglected trash bin. Dry heaves, mostly, but a hearty attempt just the same.

He sank to sit between his heels, cold hands a relief on his burning face. He looked out the window. Snow. The sight of it pretty much sent him into a panic, now. The sight of just about anything around here made his insides want to cave in until there was nothing left. This house of mirrors that was his memory taunted him. How many was this, now? Eighty-eight? Eighty-nine? He'd promised himself he'd last until one hundred.

His forehead fell to the brim of the trash can with a small "clunk." Just a few more, he told himself. Keep that velvet ribbon taut … just a few more.

Downstairs, Papyrus stood diligently at the stove as he did at the start of every timeline. He mixed a blend of way-too-chunky, unseasoned pasta sauce in a black pot, humming loudly, proudly. Sans had never actually heard the original version of this song, and so it was his brother's rendition that always managed to loop his head like a broken record. Something about the melody brought him odd comfort, despite how tired he was of hearing it.

Sans sluggishly embraced his brother as he passed, a lifelong ritual performed every morning, every night. Papyrus hugged him back. It was a small, sideways squeeze of a thing, but at least this part of his day always meant something. He turned to leave.

"OH, BU-SANS, YOUR BREAKFASKETTI!"

One day he would ignore that. He spun on his heel at the front door and shuffled back to the kitchen.

The sight and smell of his brother's cooking upturned his stomach on a good day, but Sans would never tell him that. Sentiments didn't stop the burning odor from slithering like eels into his sinuses. It took all his power not to run outside and dry heave again into the bushes.

"uh, i'm on a diet," he said instead.

"REALLY?" Papyrus was visibly impressed, but his eyes quickly narrowed with suspicion. "YOU'RE SETTING ME UP FOR A JOKE, AREN'T YOU?"

"wha—who, me? never!" Sans rolled his eye lights away. "just trying to cut back a little, y'know? you could say i'd rather not … _break_ my _fast._ "

Sans waited to no sound but his brother's spatula scraping circles against tomato char. He adored those four painstaking seconds it took Papyrus to register that he'd made a joke, the way he stopped stirring the pasta sauce so stiffly a little slop spattered against the backsplash. He threw back his head and moaned.

Sans admitted he had every right to react like that. It was definitely one of his weaker plays on words. Still, after everything, the sound of it always managed to give some truth to Sans' smile, even if … even if …

 _even if it amounts to nothing._

"SANS?"

Sans snapped back to reality and, just as suddenly, realized he had tears in his eyes. He wiped them away.

"i'm just so proud of myself," he played them off melodramatically.

* * *

Outside the looming purple door to the ruins, Sans waited in forest shadow. As predicted, Papyrus' song filled his head, struggled to drown his thoughts with positivity. He closed his eyes, focused on the melody, tried his best to ignore the coarse fingers picking away at his sanity. Then, right on cue, the snow scraped away just enough for a Frisk-sized exit.

That kid, always the same in their striped sweater and rough cut umber hair. In the past, you'd emerged worse for wear, but in twenty or so resets you had hit your stride. Relief still surged through him to see you safe, despite … everything.

He crept behind you to the first bridge as always. The whoopee-cushion-in-the-hand trick _does_ get old after a while, he rued to admit now, even if he could never say otherwise. At least you had the decency for a pity smile. What had once been an amicable handshake had been reduced to an opportunity for Sans to glimpse the reset counter on your wrist. 95, it said, crisp in black ink.

 _ninety-five … ?_

Something shattered a little further inside him, something he'd trained himself to ignore. He could feel it, that tiny speck of his soul tearing off at the edge and dissipating into dust. It took everything in him not to grip his chest, to keep his eye lights blazing, to keep his grin frozen. His mind spun circles to keep up with the act. Stay calm. Stay calm. _Stay calm._

When he'd gathered his senses, he caught you staring up into his face with something like concern. He looked away, pretended there was nothing wrong. Guilt swamped him like a sand castle at high tide, and he dissolved just as easily. There was a reason he wore this mask. Better not let it fail now.

Soon you were saying goodbye, heading away into town, leaving him alone. As soon as you disappeared across the bridge, he stepped backward into a shortcut to … just about anywhere. Somewhere isolated, he thought. The universe folded inward like a Grillby's dinner menu until he fell back deep inside the Snowdin woods, flat into the snow.

As he lay there, he stared up into the snowflakes drizzling down, past the evergreens spiking to a distant cave ceiling they all pretended was a sky. No one would find him here. Nothing he did among these branches would matter. So he pressed his hands to his face until his skull begged to crack, and screamed.

It was practically part of the script now, asking himself why it mattered he play along. Did he really have to watch over the child every single step of the way, all for some half-baked promise he made to Toriel nearly a hundred cycles ago? You had proven to do just fine on your own. So _why_ should he feel obligated to put up with this _a hundred times over_ , all so some _snot-nosed little_ … no, that wasn't how he felt. That was just the id talking. He knew why. It was the same reason your words rang in his head, the same reason your smile sparked a light in the vacuum behind his eyes.

He loved you.

He loved you with every fiber of his being, even if the brilliance of that emotion cast a dreadfully long, scythe-wielding wraith of a shadow behind him. And with every retry, the blade inched closer, just a little bit tighter along his neck. He could feel it cutting the ribbon holding his head in place, thread by thread by thread.

 _but frisk doesn't need you to make it._

 _the timelines would be exactly the same without you._

 _you're just some clown playing pranks in the backdrop._

His mind spiraled down a dark hole until all he could think was one terrible, terrible thought.

He summoned his soul, pulled it out of his chest by an invisible string. Its edges were frayed, rough and broken. So feeble. So small. In this state, just nicking it would probably be enough. He held it gently between his thumbs and forefingers, tempted.

Surfacing your own soul for more than a status check was something most monsters considered taboo, not only for the hazards involved. The sensation of seeing yourself from two angles, separate and yet together, belied your very existence. It pitted the will of mind against body. _It disgraced your unity._ As a scientist from a family of scientists, Sans was well past that poetic nonsense.

His phalanges quivered against his white moon spade. _Just break it,_ said a voice inside him. _Snap it. Rip, tear, shatter …_

Snow fell with a loud "thump" from a nearby branch and jerked him back to attention. His eyes widened to see the soul in his hands, as if he hadn't known it was real. He hurriedly pushed it back into place. No. He could last. He could pull through.

 _for frisk._

* * *

Beside his telescope in Waterfall, Sans leaned against the cold, stone wall nonchalantly. He feigned a small snooze as you rounded the corner, snoring if only for your entertainment. Just going a little off the path helped him cope at times, though it was never really enough.

"death to all humans," he murmured. "death to all—"

His eyes snapped open, alert, as he felt your hand tug playfully on his sleeve.

"oh, hey, kiddo," he said, smiling lazily as if he hadn't expected you.

"You weren't at your station," you pointed out.

He notched an eyebrow. "did i tell you my work schedule, squirt?"

You flushed with embarrassment.

"eh, i was on break," he relented with a shrug. "hey, check out this _premium_ telescope."

The two of you followed the script as usual, but when you pulled away from the telescope, perplexity flitted across your face. Your eye remained unmarked.

A rush of warmth flooded up his backside into his face. _Shit, shit, shit_ … he'd forgotten to paint the lens. Panic circled his chest like an annoying dog after its tail, but he forced himself to appear calm, measured. Stars, why did you even _do_ this anymore, knowing it was a prank?

"you aren't satisfied?" he ventured cautiously. "don't worry. i'll give you a full refund."

You watched him a moment longer than he liked. He stared back patiently, troll grin plastered wide with purpose. Then, a small smile bloomed to life on your face. You thanked him for the fun and took off, waving cheerfully goodbye around the bend.

At that moment, a memory speared through him like a lightning strike. That wave. That grin over the shoulder. The Underground collapsed to reveal a warm morning sun, piercing through a heavy corona of clouds onto a small, brick-laid school building. An old memory of you ran to wide open doors, turned, and waved farewell as you had just seconds before. He almost returned the gesture, but his hands only trembled in his pockets.

That's right, he thought. Toriel's school. It had been his job to drop you off in the mornings. After all, you …

You lived with him, didn't you?

Tears formed inside his eye sockets. Though everything within him resisted the memories folding his already broken soul in senseless origami shapes, he couldn't deny what he now understood so clearly. After cycle upon cycle of slowly returning memories, his house of mirrors had finally found an end. This timeline he resurfaced now … it had been the first.

He closed his eyes. He could see it plain as day, how you'd often turn back halfway to the school doors because, no, just one hug wasn't good enough. How he'd lift you playfully off your feet, even though you were growing so tall so fast he really shouldn't anymore. How that, in turn, would surface memories of his years raising Papyrus, how the twig had sprouted into a towering monolith overnight. How caring for his younger brother hardly made up for the one he'd lost. How he'd been too young to do the job properly. How he could have been better for Papyrus, spent more time at home, read more stories and played more games. How with you, he'd found a third chance to do it right, to be the best big brother anyone could ask for.

 _was i still not good enough, kiddo … ?_

Waterfall's scenery seared against Sans' vision like pixel burn on a television screen. Weariness ached through his bones, and his arm draped across the broken telescope for support. Its rusty legs creaked, ground against their bolts and washers. He'd never felt so tired. It was as if a hole had been driven through his body, his heart, his soul.

Years, he thought miserably, holding his face in one hand. You'd been on the surface together for _three years_ … and he had been there for you every day of it.

Though he did his best to follow through for the remainder of the timeline, he caught himself spacing out more often, staring into his hands or his feet. His ribs felt more a cage than they ever had before.

It would be nice to see the sky again, he tried to convince himself … but when you revealed the setting sun, it only hurt his eyes.

* * *

Sans blinked awake to his ceiling in Snowdin. Everything around him glared like an overexposed film. He realized he may have sought to empty his stomach over the side of the bed when he found himself lying there a minute later, arms dangling off the edge.

He'd done it again.

His phalanges grabbed his face as if to tear it apart. For the second time in a row, he'd lost sight of his own promise, failed to resist his worst thoughts. Why did he have to be so weak? Only a few more resets remained until one hundred, or … how many was this?

He looked out the window. Snow again. Snow _as_ _always_. The cold nagged at him from there, leaked into his room through the poorly-insulated frame. He reflected on the sharp contrast between this frigid air and the oven-hot atmosphere of his last breath, where he'd fallen into a molten grave.

Ninety-eight, he remembered suddenly. That's right. Before stepping off the ledge, he'd remembered thinking … the difference between ninety-seven and one hundred … matters as little as the consequences …

He curled into a ball on his bed. Thinking too deeply made his head scream in protest. His bones, too, ached as if someone had rubbed sand into his joints. As he waited for the walls to stop dancing with bright-ringed circles, he vaguely wondered if resetting hurt you like this too.

Downstairs, Papyrus stirred his usual spaghetti sauce to his usual tune. The song had been nagging at Sans over the last few resets, as if he had known the original at some point, but … it technically hadn't happened yet. He observed Papyrus both nervously and fondly from the stairs.

"hey, bro?" he asked.

Papyrus glanced in his direction. "OH, THANK GOODNESS! I THOUGHT YOU'D NEVER WAKE UP."

If only. "where'd you catch that jingle?"

"I …" Papyrus' spatula slowed almost to a stop. "YOU KNOW, I'M NOT ENTIRELY SURE."

Sans thought so. Sans worried so. Still, it had been just shy of a hundred resets and Papyrus hadn't come anywhere near to second guessing it.

Sans slipped through space to stand instantly behind Papyrus and snuck his arms around him. It wasn't far off from every day before, only this time, he clung to him for much longer than was normal. He battled to keep the tears from gathering, face cradled in the lower curve of his brother's spine as if it had been fashioned to hold his head. Papyrus couldn't return his affection at this angle, even less see his face, but he turned just enough to pat him warmly on the head. At that, Sans released him and headed for the door.

"OH, BU-SANS! YOUR BREAKFASKETTI!"

This time, he ignored him.

* * *

The following reset, Sans waited once again outside the Ruins' doors in a haze, drowning in white noise and spaghetti songs. He had no more thoughts left to think, no more feelings left to feel. It was easier this way.

Since remembering the surface, he'd found plenty of time to reflect on his "original" life. From what he could remember, it had been a veritable paradise, complete with lei and tiny umbrella in his margarita. So why had you reset? Had it been a one-sided impression to think your life had been a dream come true? Had something bad happened to his kid that he'd been too incompetent to notice? Digging for answers rebirthed more than bargained for, from anime parties to random PTA meetings, but ultimately left him at a greater loss than to start.

Every bit of it hurt: the good memories, the bad memories, the questions in between. All of that wonderful life had been stripped away from him. None of it had happened. And each answer he concocted for your decision offered less sense than the one before. Soon enough, he had begun to think with increasing confidence … there simply wasn't one.

No. He _trusted_ you. From the tips of your eyelashes to the soles of your feet, you were a _good kid._ Whatever reason you had, you were doing the right thing. It had to be important.

That didn't mean it hurt any less.

99, said the soft skin of your wrist. As his eyes slipped discreetly to the black ink, he couldn't help feeling just the tiniest speck of hope. In one more try, in one more reset, he could divert from his hand-paved highroad without guilt.

He forced a smile through word searches and death traps, through x's and o's and Alphys' failed maze. He forced a smile even as he stood alone at the snowy ledge beside the wall of eyes. You used to seek him out here, once upon a time. Once upon a time, you'd stopped coming.

His pupils stared off into the cavernous dark of the Underground, toward distant squares of light. That cabin in the distance … whose was it? Was it warm inside? They seemed happy from here, but it was difficult to tell at such a distance. Would they see him, if he fell into the deep below? Would they give it a second glance? Would it make any difference to them?

Crunching snow steps shuffled him out of his reverie. When he turned to face the sound, it surprised him to discover Frisk, the one and only. You frowned up into his face apprehensively, wringing your hands. He brightened his smile at once, prepared to ask what the holdup was, if you were following him … but you cut him short with a warm grip slipped inside his own. His breath caught in his throat.

"Are you all right?" you asked, so quietly it hurt.

His soul felt to break, and certainly, some of it had dusted away against his vertebrae. His smile shuddered into a passive rest, eye lights snuffed into total darkness. A sensation of drifting overwhelmed him as if he'd slipped away into an involuntary shortcut and landed on the sea. Was he all right…? _Was he all right?_ Had you really just asked?

In the long second it took him to regain some self-control, he witnessed the horror unfold on your face, the realization, the dismay. An ache spasmed through him, unlike anything he'd felt in almost a year. A smile curved back into place, genuine but faded, the best he could muster for you now. He removed his hand gently from your trembling grip and stopped it to rest on your head. His fingers traced through your hair in the way he knew you liked, the way that had always comforted you back to sleep after a bad nightmare, the way that had reassured you there was nothing to fear.

"doesn't matter," he said, almost as a breath. "don't worry 'bout me, kid."

You stood still, dumbfounded. He knew, even if so little had been said, you finally understood each other. Before you could even open your mouth, he had opened a portal around him. He drifted away from reality, away from you. He had no destination in mind, only that he wanted to escape, to disappear. When he opened his eyes, he was surrounded in a dark that only grew darker … yet darker.

.

.

.

W̷͚̝̭͕̞̺̻̞̖͈͎̲̞͖͍̑ͦ̊̄ͤ̽͜͢H̙̩̣̤̙͎̥̖̲̺ͧͪͯ̆̌͐ͧ̋̎̊̅͢͡A̅͗̎ͮͭ͂̔ͣ̅͋̀ͨ͌ͧ̋̚͠҉͏͏̝͇̼͍͇͚͢T̷̸̶͎͈̯̩̭̜̗̳͚̮̙̹̖͆̏̿ͫͣͤͦͩ̃͂͂̈́ ̡̛̰̼̭̲͕̰͍͕͍̩̦̘̟̠̖̪̯̪̌̔ͫ͂̈̍ͤ͂ͥ̄ͬͤͯ̎́͠Ā̶̩̰͖̣͓̻̼̆ͣͬ̃̒̏ͨ̿̀͋̚͘͟͡R͖͚͖̹̯̘̳̗̗̣͉̹ͦ̍ͫ̽͛ͮ́̚͢͟͞͝Ę̵̣͔̫̱̼̥͈̺͉̦̜̯͐͑ͩ̏̋ͧ͊͛̅ͪ̽ͬ̄͋̓͝ͅ ̴̧̹͇̠̹̪̞̤̮̬̇̊̎̀ͪ͂̌͗̆ͩ̎̚͢͟͡Yͤ̌̀͌̄̈́͏̨̳͕̳̮̯̘̫͎͓̤̖̹̪͜͠Ǫ̫̞̘̠̼̯̝̬̻̫̜̖̟͕̳̖̙̈́̋͆̉̊ͭͧ́̈̚U̳̞͔͎ͥ͂͒ͩ͋̈̈́ͧ̄̄͂̀͟ ̧͔̠̳̥̏ͯ̉ͯ̒̿̎ͯͩ́ͥ̑̂̓̀ͭ̓͘̕͝͡ͅL̵̸̤̣̙͎̬̳̝̹̟̩͇͍̽ͫͮ́̐ͥͬ̀̇ͭ͜͞Á̴ͪͥͯ͋̾ͧ͆̾̐ͨ̀̈́ͯ̓̍ͧͦ͟҉̘̱͚̥́Ü̷̘̩̠̹͈̺͉̦̟̥̟͈͕͍̠̠̼̭̱̑̍ͤ̏͌̓̃̈̄̊̈͌̀͟͠Ģ̵̍ͩͣ́͏̸͓̝̩͍͇͇͕̩̩Ḣ̟͖͓͎̫͍͓̠͚̣̠̠̹̣̘͍ͦ̍ͬ̔ͣͦ̔̉̕͟͠Ĭ̧̘̳̘͖͎̲̣̠̟͔̣̯̬̝ͧ̍͊̋ͨͧ̌̐͆ͤ̎̀̚̚͡N̶̴̢̨̯͙̮͍̩̤͉̭̮̼̬͙͓̱̺̅̇̊ͪ̒̓͐͗ͯͨ̄̿̅̽͒ͨͨ͝ͅͅG̶̺͈͍̦̻͔̱̫̳̰̳̖͖͍̗̞̦̞̭̅̑̆ͧ͜ ̧̟͓̺̘̹̘̰̜͍̺͉̩̗̄ͦ͑͒ͪͩͪ̒̒͡Ą̨͍̟̲̼͔ͫ͒ͪ͛ͣ͋͐ͪ̆ͭ͐ͭ̕Ṱ̶̬̺̠͚͓̅͛̊̀͡  
̶͍̳̥̠̟̉̉ͥ̇͋ͬ̃̏̈̀͢T̆͊ͧͤ͆͋̋́҉̨̲͇͔͍̪̼̩̲̼H͙̠̟̖̭̠ͨͨ͐ͪ̿ͣ͂̐̔̐̑ͪ̕I̵̷͖̘͉͈͍ͭ̃ͦͫ̓ͤͨ̈̄̂̊͊S͍̪̻̞͍͎͈͔̮̰̹̭̬͈͖̞̖ͧͥͭͯ̅̉͛͂̌̀̿̓ͭ̂ͪ̌ͩͬ́͠ ̶̰̦̱̲͋́͌̂͟͠I̹̯̞̰͙͔̬̫̹̽̂̆̌̓͡͡Ş̛̱̖̲̮̖̮̙̤̪̹̠̩̰̥̞͖̻̱̐ͦͮ̅̕͜Ņ͑͋ͩͣͮͭ̂͛ͮͣ̌ͦ̔ͮ͑̚͏͕̮͖̻͍̭̘͚̥͓'̷̓ͩͪ̇͐ͧͣ̄̂̃̒̈́̾ͯ̈́҉̨̲̪̳̹̟̘̭̠̳̭͜T̰̘̗͎̭̜̥̗͔̪͕͔̲͔̊̽ͦ̓̅͒̓̓ͣͥͮ̒ͩ̓̕ ̸̲̫̬̞͓̥̻͙̭͉̖̦̫̥̗͈ͪ̍̈̓ͯ̐̀̎̍͡ͅͅF̆̈̃̋ͨͤͬ̆̓̔͏̴̷̛̮̣̣͢U̶̟̹̯̻̤͓̹͙̰̭̖̘̖ͭ͆̋̾̽̔ͪ̂͘͞N̛̜͈̼̩̟̹̯͍͚͇̦̘̭̥̫͔̠̂̅̍̄͊ͣ̑̓̅ͪͥ̎̎͑̀̀N̷͓̤̝͇̹̙̲̳̦̘̤͖̪̺̯͕̜̯̂͛̎̑̎͐̀̈̚͠Ý̵̬̯̟̭̰̙̩͇̳͕̲̣̺̩̯̭ͨ̋ͭ͐̎̑ͥ͜  
̨̗̤͓̻͙͖̯̣̟̠̠̣͓͍̖̥ͦͮͧ͑͟͞ͅL̢͓̗͕̻̝̼̩͓͇̞̺̊̉͐̎̃̉̃̔͋̄̎ͧͥ́̀͠͡O̱̣̳̖̰̩͈̗͇͗̈́̑ͦ̿ͧ̈ͩͬͭͬ͑̐̀̀͡͝O̷̶͇͍͖̱̫̬̥̠̪̒̈́̐͗̈ͣ̍̈̈͊̇̑̀̚̚̕͠K͑̐̀͛ͩͫ̀҉̷̲͉̦̘͕̫̟̼͍̱̥̩̯̣̭ ̷̷̬̗̜̮͓͕͚̮̤͉ͧ̔̅ͦͯ̉̂̔̚Ǡ̡̯̙̘ͤ̚͘͝T̼̻̞̠̩̳͇̤͚̰̞̟͔͚̞ͥ̓̈́ͦͯ̀̚̕͢͞ͅ ͭ̏̆̍̽͛͑͗̓ͫ͗ͭ҉҉̵͓͚͈̟͘͡M̡̨̳͙̗̭̮͈̦͕̣͔̟̬̿͌͆ͥ̇ͩͦ̌ͭͤ̾̀E̡̥̗̖̣̭̦̼͇̳̦̟͖̭̫̔̐̍̂̄̌̊͌ͫ͛̓ͦ̅͟͢͢͞  
̷̦̺̝̖̮̰̟̝̣͗͊ͫ̓̈ͧͧ̀̋ͬ̊͊̀̀͑̀̚ͅS̏͊͊ͪͮ̑̏̔̾̏̿͋̓̽̉̊̔ͩ҉̤̳̪̬̘̩̹̘̫̳̭̖́͡A̛̛̮̣̟̞̦͕͇̗̞̙ͦ̍̅ͫ̅̉̽͑ͧͯͮ͟N̡̻͔̺̠̣̜͈̒ͯͪͪ̍̐͡͞S̎̈͗̍ͤͥ̀ͨͧ͗ͦ̏́̇̅̄͏̺̥̹̬̥̜̟͓͙̰̰͘͠͡

.

.

Sans found himself hanging off the edge of his bed again, aching. Magic gnawed at the back of his skull, as if he'd attempted to expel it and failed.

The way he'd left the previous timeline misted over in his mind, but maybe it just blended in with all the others. Something still prodded his memory with concepts of darkness, ghosts, regret … nothing unusual, he supposed. He could only assume he'd played by the rules. It would be uncharacteristic of him to willingly abandon you in your final timeline together. Yet his last recollection never went past the cliff behind Snowdin, where his smile had fallen, where he'd run his fingers through your hair …

… Oh, god. You knew, now, didn't you?

He shivered for more than just reset sickness.

Anything he did now would carry meaning in your eyes.

He clutched at his face, sank fingers into the holes of his temples and eye sockets.

How could he have fucked up so badly, and in the _last possible second_?

The bone cracked just a little against his disproportionate magical strength.

But that's just what he does best, isn't it? Fuck up, fuck up, fuck everything up …

Sudden calm overtook him like a lap of warm water across his back. He released his face, no mind given to the spiderweb of fractures spread like a ballroom mask across his eyes. _One hundred._ Breath shuddered inside him, far behind his sternum.

 _One hundred._

He closed his eyes, tugged his soul from his chest. It fared even worse than before, scarred, torn, and ragged. His hands took hold of it firmly. The scythe slinging his neck drew near enough to scratch bone. The ribbon snapped free.

 _don't worry 'bout me, kid._

He crushed his soul to powder.

* * *

Three more resets like this. Four. Five. Six. Eight. Twelve?

Resurrecting hurt him more than dying. Dying was simple, euphoric even: sharp pinch prelude to a gentle endorphin rush like the best damn dream he'd ever have. Rebirth, on the other hand, always came with that awful, far-too-familiar aftermath: the burn in his bones, the ache in his head, the sickness in his stomach.

Over the next thirty or so timelines, his soul became more and more difficult to surface. When it finally fluttered out his chest, helpless like a baby bird, he took a moment to observe it. It looked awful, only half alight, dead edges torn among stray cracks sneaking home to center.

The scientist in him wondered if repeated suicide like this had an adverse, compounding effect on the little white spade. The stress had clearly carried over from reset to reset, frayed edges and all that. Especially now, it appeared as if Time's ancient, scraggly hands had cobbled his soul back together with a few cross-stitches and some scotch tape. Surely this was unexplored territory, he thought with a madness that nauseated him to recognize; something to be recorded for posterity. Oh, but that's right. _Nothing ever lasts here._

"one hell of a thesis project, huh, dings?" he whispered to no one in sight.

He closed his eyes, bracing himself for the brief, inevitable stab of pain. A heavy knock interrupted him, battered away at his door.

"SANS?"

His eyes snapped open wide, empty of light. _Papyrus?_

The door swung open before he could react.

"SANS, THERE'S SOMEONE ON THE PHONE WHO …"

Papyrus stood rooted in the doorway, one glove to the handle and another to his ear. His sockets seemed to shrink back in his head. The phone at his temple slid away, clattered to the floor.

Sans stared stiffly ahead at the soul in his hands, his earthquake escalating to new heights on the Richter scale. Stars. He couldn't do it, not in front of Pap, but … He blanched, whiter than his usual ivory. His soul wouldn't go back inside.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Papyrus asked desperately, voice wavering. He marched over and seized him by the wrists. "STOP THAT! STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!"

It was just too weak.

In the firmness of his brother's grip, his soul snapped between his hands like the most fragile of summer snowflakes. Pain shot through him with a volt of electricity he couldn't hide from his face, not when he hadn't expected it. He fell limp in his brother's hands.

 _no._

"SANS!"

 _not this._

He watched the horror unfurl on Papyrus' face, the one that knew all at once what he'd done, what they'd both done. Guilt. Blame. Terror. His image was darkening away faster than Sans might have blinked it.

 _it's not your fault, don't you think that for second, don't you dare think …_

Sans wanted to move, to hold him, but he could barely even think now. He felt gathered into strong arms, even if his body quickly displaced to ash around them. It was strange, he thought vaguely; rain on dry earth … tears on dust …

 _* smells like petrichor._

Dying hurt so much worse, in the presence of someone he loved.

* * *

The following reset barreled into him like a truck. The sensation overpowered him differently from before, heavier on impact, more resounding. Was it odd to think the air weighed down on him with something like … finality?

For minutes on end, he lay on his bed nearly senseless, incapable of breathing more than a few shuddering gasps at a time. His limbs wouldn't budge. The pain literally blinded him.

Tears had already gathered in the pools of his eye sockets. What if that reset had been the last? What if that had been the way he'd left Papyrus, traumatized for a lifetime with blame dripping heavy off his shoulders? Had he spent the remainder of that timeline processing this? Even those few seconds Sans witnessed had been too long to abide. He couldn't do that to him again. He just couldn't. And yet his will to live shrank away from him as to the end of a long hallway, and he couldn't move his feet.

He forced himself to breathe. No matter how many times he reassured himself that, for all intents and purposes, the previous timeline hadn't _really_ happened, the memory of his brother's stricken face branded his soul with an immortal scar.

His soul … It was still hovering outside him.

He took the ghost heart fearfully into his hands. Cracks twisted violently across the entire surface, inward from dark, dusty edges. It was a wonder it held together at all. He ran his fingers carefully across the breaks, his insides writhing like a netted fish. As much as he might will it, it still refused to go home.

CRASH.

Sans scrambled back as Papyrus kicked in the door without a word. It slammed into the partition between their two rooms, leaving a large, clean hole in the drywall. He didn't know why he'd been so startled; this was … fairly typical behavior, when it came down to it.

Papyrus locked eyes with the shape in Sans' hands and, once again, dropped the phone.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

Sans reeled as he recognized the emerging pattern. He couldn't let it happen again. He _wouldn't_. He summoned spacial energy around himself, seeking to teleport as far away from his well-meaning brother as possible. For whatever reason, be it the separation of his soul or his own mental weakness, his attempts failed to birth more than blue sparks.

He backed away instead, curled into the wall to keep his tattered monster soul well out of reach.

"SANS!" Papyrus wrested his shoulders, struggling to turn him. "PLEASE, JUST LOOK AT ME!"

Sans resisted, but it's hard to put up a fight when your brother is more than twice your height and can bench you like a plush. Papyrus lifted him off the bed and plopped him back down to face him. He pinned Sans' shoulders back so he had no choice, at which point the smaller skeleton's soul hovered between them in plain sight, completely vulnerable.

Papyrus stared stiffly at the ravaged embodiment of his brother's life essence and, all at once, the severity of things became clear. His face contorted through a cycle of emotions—shock, concern, dismay—before settling at last on heartbreak. His eyes dragged upward to his brother's haggard face.

"SANS … THIS … THIS IS … HOW LONG HAVE YOU …?"

"don' touch it," Sans whispered desperately. Tears already burned at the low curves of his darkened eye sockets. "pappy, please … it won't go back in, so just … keep away."

Papyrus lingered a moment before releasing his shoulders. For a beat, he knelt thoughtfully, worriedly across him on the bed. Then, in defiance of everything Sans had just said, he slipped the glove away from his right hand and lifted it to that shuddering soul.

Sans' insides leaped with fear. He caught Papyrus' bare hand in both of his before it could make contact and pushed it away.

Papyrus didn't let go. Instead, he folded his fingers, enveloping Sans' smaller ones together in one all-encompassing grip. With just that, Sans felt every inch of his resolve drain away.

"Never fear," Papyrus said, for a rare moment speaking below the standard bellow. He smiled, the softest Sans had seen in years. "The Great Papyrus could never hurt someone as important as his brother."

Sans' eyes relit, widened, allowed the tears he'd pooled to leak swiftly down his face. Papyrus' expression had fallen on him so sincere, so understanding, so concerned. It hurt, but in a way Sans wanted, a way he craved. That supernova of a heart Papyrus carried was shining out to him, and its radiance paled the deathly shadow stretched miles behind him.

 _ya also couldn't hurt a snow poff, y'dingus,_ he thought, smiling just a little despite everything.

Closing his eyes, he left his hands on Papyrus' but allowed him to press long phalanges to the shattered glass of his soul. It didn't break, didn't tear. If anything, it felt to grow stronger.

"Breathe," said Papyrus.

Together, with their hands combined, they ushered the pale spade back behind his ribs where it belonged.

Moments later, Sans realized he still rested there, alive, holding Papyrus' hand over his chest. He lifted his head. Those small but aching, sympathetic eyes stared back into his, smiling with reassurance.

Tears ran down Sans' face. Before he had a say in it, he was sobbing, heaving water from his sockets in great, fast rivers. His bones shook, clattered despite themselves. Papyrus brought him close, let his tears find a sponge in the costume fabric of his battle body. Sans clung to him, whispering apologies, gratitude, excuses. Papyrus listened to them all, shushing them as a wind to his wishes in dandelion seeds.

Sans didn't catch what Papyrus said when he picked up the phone again. He hardly cared. His new goal was to lie here for every reset, wrapped in his brother's arms until the universe gave out around them. It was painful but reassuring, to think Papyrus would forget this soon.

Papyrus soon began humming that song again, the same from every morning past, the one that had somehow both driven Sans crazy and kept his sanity in check. Only now, with its heartfelt tone, he could actually place it.

 _Take a breath  
Clean yourself in the river of time  
'Cause somewhere the sky's always falling  
And sometimes it's just your turn_

 _Let it go  
Let it go  
Let it go  
Let it go_

 _So now you know the hell  
Of wondering if a change is gonna come  
It don't mean much  
Don't hold your breath  
They will just have to save themselves this time_

 _But you  
You  
You will be just fine._

Sans lifted his head from the lake of tears he'd poured and looked his unassuming brother like a god in the face. This song … Papyrus hadn't even listened to it on his own. It was something Frisk had played at night before sleeping, something Sans had added to his indie chill mix on a whim. There was no way Papyrus remembered the resets like he did, and yet some part of him was peering through his subconscious, reaching out to reassure him in the only way it could.

Who did he think he was to call himself Papyrus' brother when he'd nearly abandoned him to dust and an empty jacket? If this were his second chance to prove himself, he'd surely failed … just as he'd failed his first chance so many years ago, failed to sacrifice more than half his body down hell's throat for someone that mattered infinitely more. Their fingers had been only inches apart, but it might as well have been light years in terms of time and space… .

Tears bubbled over larger, faster down Sans' cheekbones. He knew no god, and yet … surely this imprisonment was some form of karmic retribution for his shortcomings, a turntable judgment on himself for arms too goddamn short to reach.

"'m sorry … i'm a terrible brother …"

Papyrus ran a gloved hand up and down his back reassuringly. "Nonsense."

* * *

As something close to an hour passed, Sans remained in his brother's arms, awake only at a glance. His mind had stolen away to a peaceful darkness behind empty eye sockets. Timelines, resets, life and death … all had quelled to a distant rain cloud. The future or lack thereof didn't concern him anymore. All that mattered was right here, right now. He could be happy, resting under the soothing touch of Papyrus' hand.

The last time he felt this way, he had been on the surface. A small group of his friends had met together at the heights of Mount Ebott to stargaze, as close to their old prison as they'd dare gather. They had sat huddled on Toriel's gift of a patchwork blanket, taking turns at the telescope … he, Papyrus, Alphys, and …

 _Frisk._

The pupils of his eyes reignited. There you were, standing at his bedside. Your deep brown eyes were glassy, rippling with tears ready to fall.

He only stared, no emotions left to spend. At least, that was what he thought until your hand reached out to touch his cheek. It was involuntary, how he bent into your palm, how his face lost its barriers in reveal of everything broken inside him. Next thing he knew, you had jumped into his arms, blubbering apologies as if everything wrong in the world were your fault.

Some part of Sans' soul reformed inside him, a part that had missed your bond, that had needed your love, your acknowledgment, your reassurance. He threaded his pale fingers into the dark of your hair, lost in the waves of an umber sea.

"asked you not to worry 'bout me, kid," he whispered.

Papyrus made room for both of you in his embrace and together you became a bundle of bones and cloth and comfort. In some time, however, he left you alone on the premise of patrol duty. Those humans wouldn't catch themselves, he said. Sans smiled at that, a tiny ghost of a thing still dampened.

"he doesn't know you're a human, huh," he said.

You shook your head and grinned.

As the two of you lay together, facing each other like sleepover friends exchanging secrets, you held a long overdue conversation.

Sans told you almost everything. He confessed his awareness of timelines and how it had affected him psychologically. He admitted his struggles, his failures, his misgivings. In spite of all the answers he had unbottled for you, he only had one question in return.

"why'd you do it, kid?"

Your hand and his were resting back to back, and it wasn't good enough, not for either of you. You threaded your fingers around his, and his soul leaped like a dolphin in somersault. His once darkened eye sockets flickered back to life.

"Asriel," you muttered. "I came back for Asriel."

"the dreemurr kid?"

Suddenly, everything made sense. He smiled, a weak little crescent curve of a thing he really, truly felt, even if bittersweet.

"not satisfied until everyone's saved, huh?" he said miserably.

His words shattered apart near the end, and he broke down into tears again. He felt your thumbs at his eye sockets, your hands struggling to dam a river too wild.

"even if you keep resetting until the timelines fold in on each other … frisk … i can't imagine a clean way to save his soul. and if you keep trying … _god_ … i'm at my limit, kid. i-i'm at m-my … i can't do it. it's me or him, you know that … ? it's m-me or …"

He curled in on himself, broken. For a moment, he was left to silence, to weeping, to wondering just how long he had left to suffer in this groundhog day nightmare before his soul crumbled on its own. When your arms enfolded him, tucked him close like an old teddy bear, he hardly felt it. It was strange to think you were smaller than him, far younger than him, and yet your font of empathy and compassion never ran dry. It was a useless show, he thought. There was no way you'd give up on Asriel now, not after all this.

"But I already chose," you murmured against his temple.

"yeah …" he said, voice earthen with resignation. "yeah, i guess it only makes sense that …"

"I chose you."

He froze suddenly, stiff as a board in your embrace. His tears dried as if disbelief had reached in and flipped a switch. His needlepoint eye lights lifted to your deep brown irises.

"you … what?"

Your forced smile told him so much more than words could. Sadness, fear, uncertainty. This last reset … it had been different, hadn't it? The air pressing down around him was … heavy… .

"frisk," he began, clutching the bed sheets underneath him tightly, "what did you do?"

A strange mixture of regret and determination crossed your face. Then, you told him a story.

You described a child who had struggled with guilt, who had wondered day in and day out if there were something they'd missed. A child who had looked into the eyes of the woman who wanted to be their mother and found all the wrong reasons. A child who had turned to him instead, because they couldn't bear to replace her son, not when they might have saved him. A child who loved what they had but hated what it cost. A child who had been selfish enough to throw it all away, thinking that no one would ever know. A child who'd unwittingly dragged their best friend through the dirt behind them. Their best friend who'd said nothing out of love and trust. Their best friend who'd tried his hardest until the nightmare inevitably consumed him.

Their best friend.

 _Their brother._

And the child had been terrified they'd lost him, so terrified they'd continued abusing their power but for a different reason. They'd rushed to save him, over and over and over until they realized this handle over time was what had brought them here in the first place. And so, in light of everything they might lose … they chose to destroy it.

They would never reset again.

As Sans listened, a myriad of emotions rushed through him, strong enough to dance across his face without a mask. All his questions answered, all his faith restored, all his hopes rekindled, and even so, his insides burned raw with confusion.

"why?" he asked finally, though his voice left him considerably lighter. He scooted back just a little farther to see you properly. "why all that … for me? i'm pretty _small_ , all things considered. side character in your life's story and all that."

He ignored the look of disapproval that crossed your face and frowned.

"kid. you tried _so hard_ for asriel. i watched you. a hundred or so resets? remember? and still, you … you threw all that effort away? all your determination addin' up to nothin'?"

"I'm determined to save someone else, now."

He blinked, at a loss for words.

"And … there's still the future." You smiled ruefully. "Even if I only have one shot."

Sans shivered, and a few lingering tears trickled down his cheeks. This was real. You really meant it. He had come so close to throwing his hand in the future away. Now, after everything that had been said, after everything that had been renewed, the thought of life had become more precious to him than ever before.

He smiled, the largest most genuine thing to cross his face for you in a long, long time. He squeezed your hands, both of them, and brought them to his eyes. He dropped new tears against their soft golden skin.

"if you've got room in your dimensional box for a bag of bones and a few dumb jokes …" he said gently, "kid … i'll do everything i can to make sure this one timeline … is the _best_ timeline of your life."

* * *

 _Head above water  
_ _Now the waves have some space in between  
_ _And I can see the words up above me  
_ _Were just some trite advice that said "remember to breathe"_

 _Well I guess you got what you're after  
If you're after a life on your knees  
Everyone just wants to be blameless  
To have a place to point to say "it wasn't me"_

 _And then we rinse and repeat_

 _Afraid to stay and scared to go  
Until I found a road where nobody knew me  
And my name was just a word that tasted strange  
And I finally got to pick what it meant._

 _Take a breath  
Clean yourself in the river of time  
'Cause somewhere the sky's always falling  
And sometimes it's just your turn_

 _Let it go  
Let it go  
Let it go  
Let it go_

 _So now you know the hell  
Of wondering if a change is gonna come  
It don't mean much  
Don't hold your breath  
They will just have to save themselves this time_

 _But you  
You  
You will be just fine.  
_

* * *

 _ **A/N:** Hoo, boy. This one ended up being way longer than the last one. Sorry about that, and sorry this took so long to update. My time's a little split at the moment._

 _I know there are a few unanswered questions and ambiguities brought up in this chapter, especially where Sans is concerned, but count on having those answered as the story progresses. Yes, I intend to make this a starting point for something else. I have a few pretty solid thoughts about what I want to do for a full story arc. I aim to keep it pretty short overall, no sprawling fifty chapters and whatnot. If I mark this as complete, I have failed you, my love, my darling,_ o _apple of my eye._

 _The song is "_ Eclippse _" by Radical Face, also the title of this chapter. It's from the short album "SunnMoonnEclippse," though "The Family Tree: The Roots" will always be my favorite. If I can make just one person appreciate this musical genius of a human being's work, I've succeeded in life._

 _Thank you for reading!_

 _ **Next up:** Gameplan, start!_


	3. The Machine (I'm Fine)

"ya still want to risk it, huh," he said, voice soft as a breath.

Sans stood at the window of his bedroom. His eye lights speared far past the fence of trees in the backyard to the cold river's edge, where massive ice blocks floated downstream on a path to Hotland. Something about the way those frozen cubes drifted away must have been symbolic to him, you thought, by the way he watched them disappear into the mist of snow dust.

He looked at you over his shoulder and frowned. Since your heart-to-heart, his eye lights hadn't fully reignited, and his already quiet voice hardly crested above a whisper. If he were anything but a baritone, you doubted it would reach you.

"going forward, it won't be the same, y'know?" he said. "hell, it already isn't the same. look at us." The corner of his mouth twitched up bittersweetly as he gestured to you both. His somberness returned just as quickly as it'd fled. "if you die, it'll stick."

"I know," you said. You gripped and twisted your hands together tightly. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous. But the only way to break the barrier …"

"fuck the barrier."

"Sans."

"all your friends are already here. we've got good food, bad jokes … is a little sunlight really worth your neck? if you stay here, you'll be safe. i'll look after ya, like before, like up there. you can be happy."

"Idunno, _Toriel,_ maybe if I had some butterscotch-cinnamon pie I'd reconsider."

He shoved his hands in his jacket pockets, unamused.

"Did you forget Asgore? His rule about humans?"

"what part of 'i'll look after ya' ain't computing? i said it, i mean it."

"Mr. One-HP can take on the king of all monsters?"

Something dark crossed Sans' face. "with one hand in my pocket, kid."

You sighed unconvinced. Though you stepped close enough to touch him, he didn't budge, stare as firm as his stance. The last time you quarreled, you had been a solid six inches taller than him. You'd forgotten how much more intimidating he could be when looking down at you, even just a bit.

"It doesn't change the fact that it's my fault we're underground again," you said. "If we only have one chance, I want to make sure we at least end up where we left off."

"where we left off, huh?" He grinned ruefully, his side-turned eyes heavy. "your butts pie is _way_ high in the sky, kid, if ya think we stand a chance of going back to the way things were."

The words were ice under your skin; you could almost feel your sins crawling on your back. When he looked at you again, you realized you'd failed to hide your hurt feelings. You looked away too late, just as the regret flashed across his face.

"hey, look, i didn't mean …"

"No," you said. "You're right. I'm sorry."

Uncomfortable silence filled the room, suffocated you like a whale in a ten-gallon tank. The glass only shattered a few moments later, when Sans reached out a soft phalange to touch the tip of your nose. Your eyes crossed involuntarily. When refocused, your vision painted him with a genuine grin, despite the sadness lurking in his eye socket shadows.

"listen," he said, in that caring, filial way you'd missed sorely since returning to the underground. He placed his hands on your shoulders, ran his thumbs reassuringly across the fabric of your striped sweater. "i'm with you a hundred percent, whatever you decide to do. 'kay?"

It took a moment, but you smiled. "'Kay."

"i'm just trying to make sure we put some brain sauce into it, y'know?" He let go of you hesitantly. "we still don't know how things could've changed. butterfly effect and all. 'sides … sounds like you have some conflicting goals in mind, here."

You narrowed your eyes inquisitively.

"you want to break the barrier," he elaborated. "but you still wanna save asriel, right?"

You sighed and plopped to sit on his bed, bracing for the lecture around the corner.

"as much backbone as you've put into it, you've never been able to find him again after bursting the bubble. hence the resets." Sans started pacing, hands in a rare buzz as you knew them to be when problem-solving or rambling about theoretical physics. "that's a bit of a problem, kid. it means you have to get him back to normal _before_ freeing the underground. if you do that, it leaves us without crazy goat flower boy to make a sunset possible in the first place. as a plant, he's the only one who can absorb enough souls to pull it off."

"Unless Asgore kills me and uses the seven human s—"

 _"not an option,_ kid." Sans' left eye flashed blue and yellow a second, as you knew it to do when his passions surged. As both eyes dimmed back to near darkness, he ran a hand over his face. "the way i understand it, there's only one tiny peephole of a window to both save him and break the barrier, and that's …"

"I know."

He turned to you, surprised. You pointedly watched your feet as they kicked together sheepishly.

"I've tried a hundred times, remember?" you said. "I've talked him down at the end over and over, trying to find a way, some loophole or condition I didn't see before. But he's so unreasonable then, and _violent_ , and when he finally calms down he's so caught up in making amends he doesn't feel like he _deserves_ to be saved."

Sans frowned thoughtfully a moment. "you said he remembered the resets?"

"Sometimes. He knew when I came back to life, but if I took things all the way back from the end to the start, he seemed to forget."

When you looked up, Sans was rummaging around in his chest of drawers, tossing pairs upon pairs of mismatched socks aside.

"Uh … whatcha doin'?"

He shushed you.

You flopped back to lie on the bed, arms spread wide.

After a few moments, he finally surfaced with a small silver key, the one you knew would open the cellar below. He looked at it with something like unease, doubt, and hesitation, until at long last he shrugged those emotions aside. Instead, he chuckled.

"hey, kid. i've got heaps of monster candy in my basement. wanna come check it out?"

* * *

The basement was as dusty and frigid as you remembered. Every time you visited this place, it felt as if you'd been the first person to explore it in decades. Especially considering the centuries, even _millennia_ monsters could live, you wondered how long it had been for Sans. Did he know you had found this place? By the way he hid the papers that littered the counter space, you guessed not.

"Should we be down here right now? Papyrus would lose his head if he came home and found us missing."

"eh, we got about an hour or so," he waived.

He took a deep breath in, let it slowly out. His eye lights dimmed as they traced the corners of the room from end to end, catching in the cobwebs and structural fractures along the walls. They landed like a weight on a faded pink curtain, draped over what you already knew to be some strange, broken machine. He took hold of the cloth with one hand. His shoulders squared, and he hesitated.

"There'd better be candy back there, old man, or I'll have a _bone_ to pick with you." You crossed your small arms fussily.

He laughed a little, enough to take the tension off his shoulders like you'd hoped. Then, he pulled back the drapery and stepped aside.

The metal was twisted and worn, towering above your head nearly to the ceiling. What chunks of the casing weren't missing were littered with scrapes, gauges, and burn scars, as if dragged through seven layers of hell before dropping like a stone into its final resting place. It remained unplugged; by some scorch marks and missing wallpaper on the wall beside its many coils, you guessed there was a good reason for that.

You waited patiently for him to say something, and he for you, but in a matter of seconds his browbone fell with scrutiny.

"been back here before, huh, snoop?"

You shrugged. "Gets boring outside the caution tape."

"fair enough."

He tapped his fingers in time to a melody looping his head, a nervous habit, and leaned against the hunk of broken metal. His eyes looked anywhere but at you.

"a couple calendars ago," he said, "i was wrapped up in some serious science shenanigans. 'm sure i told ya at some point i dabbled in physics of the quantum variety?"

You nodded.

"well, might've downplayed that a _teensy_ bit." His forefinger and thumb hovered millimeters apart. "truth is … science was my _world_. worked with the best of the best on some of the biggest shit the underground's ever seen!" His gaze, for a second brighter than you'd ever witnessed, clouded with the mist of one too many ghosts. "the last project i worked on, though," he said quietly, "didn't really wanna do it, y'know? thought it was a bad idea. but dings was gonna try it with or without me, so i …"

He trailed off. You didn't know whether it would help or hinder to stand closer to him, but he snapped out of it before you could decide.

"time manipulation," he said. "thought we could undo the barrier if we set its clock back. key was to isolate the big bubble's timeline and wipe it clean, make it so it never existed while leaving everything else's intact. i had a skele _ton_ to say about the danger of time shifts and paradoxes, but … he made it work, somehow." He placed a hand on the machine. "accident sure as hell proved me wrong."

"Accident … ?"

Sans shook his head unwillingly. "point is this hunk of scrap punched a hole in time, then gave out before it could undo the damage like it's s'posed to. i tried to fix it but … heh … if you couldn't already tell." He wiped an inch of dust off the surface.

"So you think this hole in time is what made it possible for me to reset?"

"among other things. what's strange to me is that you were nowhere _near_ the rift when you fell … the opposite, actually. i know for a fact that if i hadn't been so close to the source, we wouldn't be having this conversation. my memory, the way i can fold time and space to cut corners …" His face darkened slightly. "remind you of anyone?"

You considered this a moment, but not long before your eyes spread wide. If there were one thing you'd learned from living three years with the Gaster brothers, it was to assemble your puzzle pieces. "Flowey …"

"probably jumbled by the time distortion too, somehow. this is all just a hypothesis, but if we can figure out how the broken minute hand fits into his side of the story, we might just find the answer you've been missing."

He stared at the machine a moment longer, until an unpleasant thought crossed his mind and he slowly closed the curtain. He clung to it a moment in silence, lost somewhere you couldn't go.

"when you say you want to save him … kid … what does that mean to you?"

His voice was so quiet, it speared straight through you.

You pondered this carefully. It was true Asriel never technically _died_ after your final encounter, but that wasn't the point. He was lost, alone, caught in an emotionless limbo of a flower form. What you wanted for him wasn't as cut and dry as life or death. It was intangible.

"I guess … I just want him to be happy," you answered.

"and how far would you go to give him that?"

You weren't sure how to answer him.

Sans nodded, still staring into that empty lilac canvas draped before him. His toothy smile spread wide again, nothing more than a mask to you now, though it failed to last.

"you're a good kid, frisk," he said.

As he passed on his way to the door, he looked at you askance.

"never stop."

* * *

That night, you slept at the skeleton brothers' house in Snowdin, something you'd never actually done before. You'd always been so quick to leave, to make your way to the end of the journey and a broken barrier. You didn't know how delaying your travels would affect the events to come, but poor Papyrus was on edge after the horrors of that morning. If it weren't clear enough by the way he hovered around his brother, after rushing back early from his rounds he immediately vowed to skip his training with Undyne—something you'd never known him to do—in lieu of an evening at home. You worried it would give him a heart attack if the two of you left Snowdin that same day, especially when darkness tunneled so many miles deep into Sans' eye sockets.

For a moment it was like your old life on the surface. You ate spaghetti dinner, watched MTT TV, chased the annoying dog out of surprising places like the kitchen cabinets or in this case Papyrus' boot … and yet an unfamiliar heaviness lingered throughout the house. While Sans was unusually short on puns and jokes, Papyrus was also uncharacteristically quiet. The brothers seemed somehow closer, something you hadn't thought possible: exchanging hugs more often than usual, muttering to each other out of earshot, uttering kinder words _within_ earshot … It was different, just as Sans said it would be.

Sans refused to sleep in his own room, offered you his bed in exchange for the couch. You didn't argue. Papyrus elected to stay downstairs with him, despite Sans' highly informed dissertation on cushion to skeleton ratios and comfort relativity. Awakened halfway through the night to the sound of their voices below, a sneaking glance over the banister would leave you with the image of Papyrus' long arms, locked tightly around a shaken, tearful bundle of blue.

His theory on comfort relativity needed some work, you thought.

You had trouble sleeping after that.

As morning neared, you finally deserted your bed to find Sans sitting awake, staring at the flashing lights of the television screen through sunken eye sockets. He sat in the crook of Papyrus' legs, femurs draped over his brother's knees. The long one slept soundly beneath him. Despite your silence, Sans saw you at once, as if he could feel the air displaced by your presence. His dim eye lights followed you as you crept down the remaining stairs like a ghost, across the room, and into the space between his side and the armrest. You couldn't see his face, but you felt the warmth of his soul when he tucked you under his arm.

You woke alone.

The sound and smell of Papyrus' cooking wafted over to you from the kitchen. Spaghetti again. After leaving the Underground, you had never been more grateful than the day Papyrus broke out from his pasta phase and no longer had to sneak alternatives from Toriel's pantry or Muffet's bakery. It hit you all at once that, if this succeeded, you were going to have to put up with about another year of bad spaghetti, all over again.

"GOOD MORNING!" called Papyrus, when he saw you sit up straight. He wore a long apron with the words ""kiss the cook" printed over the front, only the word "cook" was crossed out and replaced with "Great Papyrus" in sharpie ink.

"Morning," you grumbled. You tried to stretch all the kinks out of your body, but that lumpy couch had left a few lasting knots. "Sans?"

"GETTING READY," answered Papyrus calmly, though his eyes lifted uneasily to the second story. "WANTS YOU TO DO THE SAME."

You stood slowly, stiffly, and obediently wandered toward the stairs.

"A-ACTUALLY," Papyrus called, just as you passed the kitchen. He rushed over to you but paused at the foot of the steps, wringing his oven-mitted hands. "SINCE … since I have you alone."

His tone woke you faster than five shots of espresso.

"There's something I'd like to discuss with you …"

"'bout what?"

Both you and Papyrus looked up to see Sans, clean if not tired, skirting the banister along the overlook. As he shuffled down the stairs, he slipped on a different coat, fabric so deep indigo blue it was almost black, with an oversized hood of heavy off-white fur. Underneath he wore a t-shirt you'd seen him sport a few times on the surface, one with a watercolor graphic of a rib cage over a dripping, bright blue heart.

"SANS! THAT SHIRT IS HIGHLY INAPPROPRIATE!"

"think the word you're looking for is ' _hawt.'"_

"TAKE IT OFF IMMEDIATELY!"

"why? 's the same underneath."

"GAH!" Papyrus threw his arms above his head and retreated to the kitchen.

Sans beamed at you playfully, and in its light you basked in a blissful, fleeting sensation of normalcy. He nudged you with an elbow.

"heh. rattled his bones good, huh? next time, _you_ should wear it, see if his face implodes."

"I CAN HEAR YOU."

You exchanged shit-eating grins.

"BUT THE GREAT PAPYRUS HAS MADE YOU BREAKFAST ANYWAY." He held up a rather unappealing slop of spaghetti to you both.

"nah, on a diet, rather not _break_ my _fast_ …"

Sans' eyes darkened completely as soon as the words left his mouth. His hand jumped to his chest, and to your and Papyrus' shock, the small skeleton's balance started to give way. Thankfully, you were near enough to grab him before he could sink too far. You steadied him to his feet, where he latched onto your shoulder and stiffened like a board.

Papyrus hurried over to you both. "SANS, ARE YOU ALRIGHT?"

"'m fine," he muttered.

"ARE YOU SURE? YOUR SOU …"

"_i_'_m _ f_i_n_e_._"

The room went pitch black for a split second, just long enough to make his point.

No one moved. No one spoke. The clock on the wall spun its second hand in one full rotation before you felt his grip above your clavicle relax. He stood on his own, and though the decimal points in his eyes sockets had resurrected, he kept them fixated on the ground.

"c'mon, frisk," he hummed, and walked toward the front door. "should head out."

You didn't budge. Instead, you and Papyrus threw each other mismatched but concerned glances. Though your worry was plain, Papyrus' seemed much more informed. He stepped forward cautiously.

"S-SANS, IF YOU DON'T MIND …"

Sans paused, phalanges wrapped around the tarnished silver doorknob.

"I WANTED TO HAVE A WORD WITH THE HUMAN. FRISK. ALONE. BEFORE YOU LEAVE."

Hearing him refer to you as "the human" shook you to your brown boots. You looked dumbstruck up into his anxious but resolute face, now completely uncertain where his conversation would take you.

"'kay," said Sans quietly. "i'll be right out here, snow-gazin'."

The door clicked quietly shut behind him. Through the window, you watched him sidle over to lean against the sill, ensuring he remained in sight. You and Papyrus appreciated this, as small an act as it was. Sans had always been exceedingly considerate, you thought, at the very least.

At the kitchen table, you sat unnerved across Papyrus. Your legs dangled off the creaky chair, feet just inches shy of flattening to the floor. Despite a mind years older than your body, after a hundred resets you'd reacclimated to your dimensions. It wasn't as though you'd set any world records for height in the first place. By contrast, Papyrus' knees locked tight against the wooden underside, too tall to be contained.

"Human," said Papyrus calmly.

The unusual quiet of his voice still chilled you to the core.

"The Great Papyrus thanks you again for your valiance. Even with all my cunning and character, I failed to foresee what happened, while you, merely friend and not sibling, knew the precise moment to call. Tell me, is it a human thing? Do humans have mind magic? Do ALL HUMANS HAVE MIND MAGIC? BECAUSE UNDYNE TOLD ME ABOUT A HUMAN WHO COULD MIND CONTROL PEOPLE BY KISSING THEM BUT IF SHE MISSES THE KISS THEN SHE—" He glanced down at his "Kiss the Great Papyrus" apron and awkwardly concealed the writing under crossed arms. "Never mind. The point is … Sans explained to me that you are a human, and because you are a human … you probably don't know."

Confusion crossed your face.

"Certainly you've noticed that monsters are, more than anything, NICE."

You smiled. It was the _first_ thing you noticed.

"THERE'S A VERY GOOD REASON FOR THAT! You see … monster souls are a little … flimsy. We're made of magic and, well, magic is … it's … hmm …" Unease sprinkled across his face. "The Great Papyrus is great at explaining things but this thing happens to be particularly difficult." You could see the gears turning behind his eye sockets before reigniting with their familiar passion. "I KNOW!" He lifted a finger triumphantly. "I'LL JUST SKIP THAT PART."

You stifled a smile, hoped it wasn't anything important.

"When it comes to monsters … the way we think, the way we _feel_ , can affect the health of our souls. Monsters can fall down if they're put through enough stress, or if they give up."

Suddenly you understood where he was going with this.

"I saw Sans' soul, yesterday morning," he said timidly, uneasily. He played with the edges of his left mitt with incredible focus. "It's … broken. Very broken. I don't know how he's even holding it together. He can get better if he tries but I'm so … I'm so afraid, one more horrible thing and he'll just …"

You stopped his fidgeting hands by taking them in your own. At that moment, tears filled his small eye sockets, and you realized his busy fingers had been nothing more than a mechanism to withhold them. You should have known; Papyrus had always been one to keep active, in no small part to sustain his neverending font of positivity.

"Be careful with him," he said finally. "Please. I know what you have to do is very important and dangerous and Sans should be there to help you, but … promise me you won't let him … fall …"

You looked out the window, where Sans still leaned with his shoulders to the glass, hood now flipped up over his head as if to disappear inside. Your hands squeezed Papyrus' with determination.

"I promise," you said.

* * *

 _A/N: I live! Here, have some notes. *flips them into your face like a deck of cards.*_

 _ **Outline complete!** I finally finished outlining the rest of this story arc so, yes, it's happening. We're looking at probably around 20-25 chapters total, give or take. Right now it's sitting at 23, but if I know anything about the way I write, concepts have a tendency to expand and retract and scenes end up being longer or shorter than I thought. Perfect example right here. That final scene with Papyrus was intended to ease in the next chapter, but I decided it'd be best to go ahead and put a cap on the skelebros house._

 _ **Title change!** Originally this was called "No More," back when it was just a one-shot concept. Doesn't really fit as much with where I'm going, so I kept "No More" as a subtitle to avoid confusion (for now) but changed the main title to "Rift." _

_**Tone!** Things are still going to be pretty deep and meaningful and feel-good, but in the spirit of the game I want to be sure to keep the character personalities light and fun, without __straying too far from the emotion of the first two parts._

 _ **Next chapter!** Sans and Frisk return to the Ruins. Will Toriel open the door?_

 _Hope you enjoyed! If you have thoughts or feelings, please feel free to share. :)_


	4. Golden Flowers

Well above Snowdin's monolithic steeples of pine, the towering purple heights of the Ruins were visible from a mile away. Though snow had ceased falling from the above for now, yesterday's weather had spread a plush winter blanket high to your knees. Following in Sans' track made it easier on what were quickly becoming popsicles for legs. The felt-lined jacket he had salvaged from his closet certainly helped, but still you struggled.

When you started falling behind, Sans opted to carry you on his back for the journey's remainder. It was the least he could do, he said, when his teleportation magic had yet to fully recover. Nothing you said would stop him. It was the first time in a while you had hated your decrease in stature.

"I hope you're right," you said behind his shoulder in mist of breath. "She's _never_ reopened the door before."

"eh." He shrugged passively. "not all ravens are black."

At the foot of the door, he shuffled up to the bush on its far right. There, cradled in branches behind dark leaves, rested one of Alphys' cameras. Its light blinked green: active. Sans hunched over and waved into the lens, grinning mischievously. You climbed forward and stuck out your tongue.

"'sides, you know her," he went on. He picked at his near-perfect teeth in the reflection, if only to mess with the dinosaur watching. "prolly worried sick. it'd help if she at least heard our voices."

Your finger had been wiggling halfway up your nose when shame washed over you, only for a different reason. Toriel had asked for a call when everything was settled; however, somewhere in your rush to get to Snowdin you'd lost the cell she'd given you. If only you remembered her old underground number like you did Papyrus'.

Sans caught your expression in the glass and smiled reassuringly over his shoulder.

"'s not your fault, bud. heh. yer only _human_."

He let you down beside the entrance. The heights of the ruins shot so far above, your neck nearly broke to seek them out. Sans' gaze failed to follow, too preoccupied with the pillar-flanked door ahead of you. By the time you looked back, his hand was readied in a fist to knock, but … stayed put. You could see the sweat gathering on his skull, the hollowness driving more deeply into his eye sockets.

"y'told her, huh?" he asked finally. The lights of his pupils shifted to you sideways. "'what i did … what i _almost_ did."

Your feet scraped through the snow; the sound grated into your ears like sandpaper. Your cold hands hid in your sleeves.

"It was the only way she'd let me go," you admitted.

He thought so.

He took a preparatory breath and dropped his knuckles to rap audibly against the cool purple stone. The sound seemed so quiet from this side, but you knew too well how every tiny breath shook like thunder in that hallway. Your head swirled with images of fire, of magic hands rushing down as if to sweep away your soul—but you hadn't seen them this time. This time, she'd let you go without a fight.

He'd barely finished the final stroke before you heard a voice, hoarse with the gravel of first waking words.

"Who's there?" Toriel asked quietly.

Sans hesitated a second, but not long before a small smile tugged at his cheekbones. He leaned into the barrier between them, mouth almost flush with the stone.

"cash."

"Cash who?"

"heh … more of a pistachio guy m'self."

When Toriel's laughter bubbled contagiously through the door, Sans chuckled too. Then, Toriel knocked back.

"who's there?" he asked.

"Mist."

Sans' genuine smile softened at once, hidden when his forehead fell to meet the stone. "mist who?"

"Missed you."

You found yourself smiling wider than you rightly should, but it diminished just a little when Sans wiped quickly at his face with his indigo sleeve. He stood still a moment, his back to you.

"missed you too, lady," he said quietly.

It hadn't really hit you until then, just how close Sans and Toriel had been to start, and how _terribly_ distant they had become after leaving the underground. After you'd rejected the offer to live with her and chosen Sans instead, Toriel had—perhaps inadvertently—began building a wall between them. In less time than seemed fair, their relationship had become purely surface-level … and though Sans had respected her boundaries, he'd never fully recovered.

Yet another thing you messed up, you thought.

"will ya let me in?" he asked timidly.

There was a long pause from the other side before Toriel stammered, "Oh, well, I … I promised myself I would never …"

"kid's here too."

"Hey, mom."

"Oh! Greetings, my ch … . D-did you just call me "Mom?'"

You snickered.

"please," said Sans. "just this once. it'd mean a lot … to me."

After several moments of silence, the inner mechanisms of the door clapped and clanged against each other as the gears of a massive clock. You and Sans took a few steps back to make way for the door as it swung slowly outward. The snow scraped away in a quarter circle, and beyond its curtain was revealed Toriel, tall and soft and beautiful as always.

She and Sans regarded each other bashfully. For the once queen of monsters, this was the first time she had ever laid eyes on him, though Sans remembered meeting her nearly a hundred.

This time, though … this time was different.

Sans looked up into her face trepidly, eyes brighter than you'd seen them all day. Something like joy, something like fear, gleamed out of them like the tiny fireflies they were. They sparked and dilated as she bent down and dwarfed him in an inescapable hug.

"I am so sorry," she said gently.

His stick-straight spine melted in her hold like coconut oil, and he folded into her like a paper doll.

* * *

Upstairs, Toriel asked you to make yourselves comfortable and disappeared into the kitchen. While you simply took a seat at the table, Sans spun his eyes around "Home" with intrigue. He released a low whistle.

"heh, weird. so new home is just a recreation? guess asgore couldn't capture the soul—pun intended."

"I just thought that when Toriel left, she took all the color with her."

"deep."

In a matter of moments, said boss monster had returned with freshly rewarmed butterscotch-cinnamon pie, which she sliced and served to you both at the kitchen table. You had eaten nothing but monster food for so long, you wondered what it would feel like to taste human food again. Your tongue salivated at the thought of some gosh darn pizza.

The dessert filled your soul with warmth as usual, as if Toriel had pumped emotion into its very substance, and yet something about it felt different. Still good, just … not what you remembered. Maybe not every batch was the same, you thought.

Sans retched and coughed on his first bite. When you spun to face him, he was staring at his slice of pie, face ablaze with a royal blue flush. He glanced stiffly at Toriel, who only smiled innocently. You didn't understand; however, as he continued to consume the dessert, piece after piece, he appeared to be having something of a spiritual experience with it. It was as if he _felt_ every bite, as if it were transforming him from the inside out. Though you didn't know it, he certainly sensed it: a piece of his soul resurrecting, the cracks inside him thinning away.

When he finished, he granted your hostess a knowing, appreciative look. "thanks, tori."

She rubbed his back warmly.

"so, uh …" Sans stared at the crumbs on his plate a moment thoughtfully. "truth is frisk and i have a little more in our brain ovens than just the pie. might've noticed yesterday the kid knew a few slices more than they should."

Toriel's gaze teetered back and forth between the two of you. "I did find it rather … odd."

Sans looked at you pointedly, inviting you to answer her.

You bit your lip, dug your fingernails into the table's edge. The wood grain captured your interest.

"I've kind of done this before," you said. "A lot. I've been to the underground. I've met Asgore. I've met _you._ I've done it so many times I can't count, and … Sans remembered every time. It's _my_ fault he did what he did …"

"kid."

His eyes closed and would stay closed for the remainder of the conversation.

You didn't retract your statement, but the edge in his voice cut it short. You said what you could to Toriel with expressions.

"That's why I knew all that stuff," you said in conclusion. Your hands curled into fists. "I'm really sorry."

Toriel's burgundy eyes had widened with many difficult-to-place emotions. "But … but _how_ …"

"that's one thing we wanna figure out," said Sans. "first step's always 'go back to the start,' right?"

* * *

Outside Home, you and Sans waited for Toriel by the massive, red-leafed tree. Sans had surfaced his phone, tapped a few buttons on the touch screen, and scanned the maple from root to foliage. You had seen him modify his phone the evening before, but you didn't know in what way. Its readings must have been rather ordinary, since he pocketed the device nonplussed.

You glanced back toward the door to Home as a precaution for privacy and leaned in close to Sans. "What was that about?"

"seemed to me this tree's a little too happy to be underground."

"No, not _that_. The pie."

"oh." Sans glanced back to the still-empty doorway as well. "heh. well, uh … y'see, pal … magic is all about intent. monster food is _imbued_ with magic, so … ain't really that far off. most of it's whipped up just to charge your batteries, but specialty stuff can have some extra emotion built into it. nice cream fills ya with nice thoughts, glamburger makes ya wanna vogue … . it's pretty easy to tell what you're in for just by lookin' at it."

You caught his drift before he said it.

"tori made that pie with me in mind," he said. "the flavor was definitely you, not trying to take away from that, but … she baked in all these feelings about how much she cares about me and stuff. pinch o' positivity, clove o' love, cup o' encouragement … it was practically on 'i'm here for you, sans' steroids." He pocketed his hands below a softening smile. "heh … lady wasn't even sure she'd open the door, but made me a pie anyway." His eyes closed fondly. "sure is somethin'."

* * *

Indirect sunlight rippled through the barrier as through water, casting the site of your landing into a field of gold. The bed of yellow flowers sprouted happy and healthy, minus a bald, torn patch where you must have met the earth. The air was damp; cool patches of water speckled across the cave floor, filling your sinuses with the aroma of wet, earthen rock. Roots spiderwebbed out the walls, all the way up into distant heights.

That fall should have killed you.

"eesh," Sans hissed. "you didn't tell me you fell from the space needle."

The three of you stared upward into the distant light, but as your stomach pirouetted, you averted your eyes. You had always said you "fell." _Always._ Down stairs. Down hills. Down _here._ After this long, would it do any good to say otherwise?

In the corner of your eye, something green and yellow moved at the far wall but disappeared the moment you turned your head.

 _Flowey?_

Your eyes scoured the cave, but if he were there, he didn't show.

"huh," said Sans, seizing your attention once more.

He was crouched at the flower patch with his phone out. Toriel stood beside him, and soon, so did you.

"You gonna be suspicious of every photosynthesizer we cross?" you teased.

Sans chuckled. "nah … but somethin's off here. either that or the scanner's messing up."

You checked the display over his shoulder but could make neither heads nor tails of it. Through the screen, it seemed as if any area within camera view was subject to the scan—in this case, the patch of flowers—but every reading showed its answers in strange symbols, the majority of which were hands.

"frisk, stand over there, would ya?"

You relocated to the wall, where he'd motioned, and found yourself under the scrutiny of his scanner. You were honestly surprised he hadn't done it sooner—or maybe he had when you weren't looking. After this, he flipped between the two reading results, muttering to himself.

"well there's definitely traces of time funk but not enough to be the _cause_ of … well, anything." He tore his eyes away from the screen and lifted them to Toriel. "you seen any weird goings-on around here? noticed something that … shouldn't be?"

Toriel shook her head.

"I would have seen something," she said. "I come here every day. This is … where I …"

After eyeing you a nervous moment, she bent down and whispered something into Sans' tympanic cavity. His face sobered, eye lights softened. Then, he smiled, however small, and touched Tori's arm supportively.

After scanning everything from the puddles to the walls, Sans walked over to where you sat at the far wall. His eyes were dim, rimmed with dark, tired circles.

"hate to say it, but there's not much to go on here," he said, flipping through all the results.

You watched him uneasily, chewing your tongue as if limbering it up for the thought you'd been sitting on all day. "You said, the first step is to 'go back to the start,' right? Wouldn't that technically be … the rift … ?"

"not a good idea." Sans' expression became firm. "'s too dangerous, kid."

"But if that's the source of all this, then …"

 _"i said 'no.'"_

His eye sockets emptied into darkness, your queue to give it up. You grew concerned when you saw the light tremble run up his spine, but it faded quickly enough. His shoulders relaxed just a little, and he dropped his head.

"trust me, there's nothin' to see down there," he said softly. "even if there were, we should do what we can up here before takin' on something so … drastic."

* * *

Toriel escorted you to the Ruins' exit. You could feel the cold air bleeding through the cracks of the heavy door, a draft that would be bothersome if any closer to Toriel's home. The stone barrier clapped and clanged as it had before, as it did every time, and scratched heavily open.

Toriel handed each of you a slice of butterscotch-cinnamon pie to go, wrapped in parchment paper and sealed with a heart-shaped sticker. You threw yourself into her warm white fur and purple tunic, where she held you for more time than necessary, but less time than you could ever want.

When you turned to leave, Sans stayed put.

"i'll, uh, be out in a minute, kiddo," he said sheepishly. "wanna have a quick word with goat mom."

You obliged, however reluctantly, and slipped out the door into the cold.

Outside, the already frigid air had dropped yet a few more degrees. Your breath practically left you in icicles. Judging by the layer of crisp, icy white over your old tracks, it must have snowed a little since heading indoors. Oh, well. It was only an hour to Waterfall from here.

You waited beside the door, observing the twinkling crystals overhead that sought to mimic stars. They never really came close. You remembered a timeline where you'd lingered after breaking the barrier, long enough for the real stars to come out. It gutted you now, to think how Sans had stayed behind that evening, watching the sparkling skyscape alongside you. How many times had he looked you in the face that night, searching for an answer? How many times had you failed to see the apprehension, the hope, the blatant plea in the stars of his own eyes?

Something rustled in the brush of the deep forest, and when you looked, you saw a shadow moving farther away. Your curiosity and boredom got the best of you. Scraping through knee-high piles of snow, your feet carried you to the treeline. Among the foliage nearby you saw nothing, but in the distance, something shifted again. You glanced back at the stationary doorway and ventured in a little farther.

No sooner had you broken past the edge of the woods did you feel something spiral around your ankles. A noose of a green vine snapped tautly, snatched your feet out from under you before you could even comprehend it. Snow, twigs, and dirt scraped violently against your backside until finally you were lifted upside down from the ground, well out of sight of the Ruins' door. You shouted and struggled pointlessly, even more pointlessly as additional vines appeared to clench your arms in place.

"You _IDIOT,_ " said a small, grating voice.

You stiffened. The vines turned you to face a yellow flower, white countenance painted with absolute rage.

"F-Flowey—mph."

Another vine gagged you before you could say more.

"What the _hell_ do you think you're doing, Chara?!" he practically screamed. He brought you inches from the florets of his face, glare intensifying. "Don't think I didn't notice that little stunt you pulled back there."

Your eyes started watering, your face burning.

"Do you think taking away the power to reset will change anything? You think I'll lose interest if you're as powerless as everyone else? _HUH?"_ His fake smile slipped back into place. "I guess I should be grateful. Something this interesting hasn't happened in, well, _ever._ Not since that little game I played with trashbag's brother. So I guess you could say I'm intrigued."

Malignancy reignited on his countenance and he squeezed you more tightly, as if the blood rushing to your brain weren't bad enough. You coughed against the roots slowly entombing you.

 _*smells like chloroplast.  
_

"Or I could just kill you now," Flowey said, "be done with it all. Maybe if you're out of the picture the power to reset will come back to _me._ But I think you know what I _really_ want. I think you've seen how this ends, and I think you've seen it more than once. So, Chara … knowing everything I have in mind … what're you gonna do about it?"

You couldn't answer him even if you wanted to. Your mind was going dark, tunneling into a point until all light faded away. It was hard to breathe and think and …

* * *

 _ **A/N:** Oh, no! A cliffhanger. I don't like doing those but this was the best place to leave the chapter. I wrote into the next scene but at that point it just started to feel too . . . draggy. Sorry, y'all._

 _ **Updates!**_ _Aiming to post once every two weeks. That said, I don't want to overwork myself or burn myself out, so I'm keeping that pretty flexible. I'm excited about my ideas so I'm hoping things will come sooner rather than later on average, just like in this case._

 ** _Chapters!_** _I reworked some things and the outline is sitting at exactly 20 chapters. Let's see how well I stick to that._

 ** _Title!_** _I plan to take away the "No More" subtitle in the next update._

 ** _Tumblr!_** _I'm preparing to start_ also _posting this series on Tumblr. I've got the account set up but I'm an artist (professionally) and I'd like to make some chapter illustrations to go with the posts, just some simple stuff. (I might regret that.) I'll be sure to drop the account name when I've got it rolling, hopefully in the next update._

 _ **Next Chapter!** While Sans and Toriel talk some things out, Flowey has Frisk all diddly darn tied up. Will Sans get to them in time to help? (See that? I basically just told you nothing. Look how sorry I am about that cliffhanger.)_

 ** _Thank you for reading!_** _If you have any thoughts or feelings, please don't hesitate to express them!_


	5. There, Sometimes

" _Goat_ Mom?"

Sans snickered.

"I will have you know that I am of the highest pedigree …"

"of goats? 's okay, tori, no one's sayin' you ain't got papers."

"… of _boss monsters_ , descended from royalty predating the rise of humankind."

"'kay."

Toriel's face scrunched. Sans grinned like a Cheshire cat.

"boss _mom_ ster." He snapped his fingers under the twinkling stars of his eyes. "better?"

She beamed like the sun, and he basked.

The air in this chamber swayed with a slow breeze, even though the door to the Underground had been shut behind them. Sans, having only caught a passing glimpse of this place as a child, found the architecture eerie but charming with its ivy covered walls and overgrown grass patches. There was something soothing about nature taking its course, as if the Ruins were slowly falling away to inevitable samsara at his feet.

"Would you not rather stay awhile?" Toriel asked, noting the dark circles around his eye sockets. "Rest. Spend the night, perhaps… . You seem so tired. It would be best not to push yourself."

A twist of a guilty smile showed on Sans' face, but he batted away the suggestion like a cloud of smoke. "we really oughtta make up for lost time. more than a few steps to new home, if i'm countin'."

"You really are taking them to Asgore, then."

Sans picked nervously at the seams in his pockets. Did she have to say it like that?

"i won't let anythin' bad happen to 'em," he said. "made ya a promise, remember?"

At that, her gaze sank deep into the marrow of his bones.

"but they're gonna need help," he said. "kid can't make it if they face him alone, 'specially not now. they're gonna need their friends, their _family_. it'd mean a lot for you to be there."

"I have not left the Ruins since …"

"just … let it simmer."

The room echoed with their every breath, their every motion, even more as Sans took lethargic steps toward the door. She followed him quietly enough to be standing on air, and yet he could feel her behind him, the radiance of her soul an oven he could warm his hands beside for hours.

"was good to finally see you, door lady."

"Sans, wait." She lifted the claws of her fingers to her lips apprehensively. "How are you … really?"

His smile almost dissolved.

"walkin' on sunshine."

"No, you are not."

The storm he'd struggled to suppress now swirled to life across his face.

"And I just … cannot help but wonder if I am partly to blame," she said, tears building in the corners of her eyes. "That promise. If I had not asked you to make it, you would not have … "

"no, no, no, tori, please."

When her muzzle sank behind her hands, Sans felt his stomach follow suit. He had forgotten just how badly she was hurting now, how at this point in her life she had suffered enough to trap herself forever behind frozen purple doors. After everyone she had grieved, after how lonely she had become, his suicide would have been yet another stone too heavy around her neck.

He stared at the floor. It was hard to breathe.

"i'm sorry," he murmured, hands tightening to fists inside his pockets. "i was _selfish_ , so fuckin' selfish. please don't think like that. it's my own fault, no one else's. you didn't do nothin' wrong."

He only realized he had lost sense of reality when she framed his face in the soft, wet pads of her hands. Her voice felt distant, but as it called to him, the smothering feeling in his chest weakened.

"You are the one who did nothing wrong," she said. Her cheeks were dampened in saltwater. "It is not your fault, and it was not selfish. You were a victim to something I cannot even begin to comprehend, and there is nothing you could have done to change how that hurt you."

Her words sewed through his soul, tightening his pieces together even if it stung.

"So, my skeleton, please, tell me … how are you?"

* * *

As the door clapped shut behind him, Sans buttoned up the front of his jacket, if only for comfort. Never had he been cold in his life, at least not from the weather. He looked left, looked right. No Frisk. Worry quickly dwarfed any other feeling, hardened his waves of emotion into a frozen sea. Something had wiped their snow tracks clean. That wasn't a good sign.

"kiddo?" he called. Anxiety built in the back of his throat. "frisk?"

His phone buzzed in his pocket and he dug for it immediately. He had rigged the scanner to go off around any nearby time anomalies, excluding those he'd already scanned, but that wasn't it.

It was a text from Alphys.

His soul jumped practically into his skull. He and the dinosaur monster rarely communicated through anything other than Undernet.

 _"go right"_

He glanced at the hidden camera and darted forward to the indicated fenceline of trees. There, he saw the signs: the broken branches, the drag marks through the snow. He cursed behind his teeth.

* * *

Your senses were slowly crumbling.

Everything had darkened into oblivion. Sounds had dulled to underwater static, save for the high-pitch ring slowly overtaking the throb in your ears. Just as your world began slipping away altogether, it shifted. You dropped like stone out of the air, nothing to hold you taut. You thought maybe you'd actually passed out when your descent softened to that of a feather, but then you felt the cold, sobering cradle of snow around you. You gasped for breath. Oxygen had never tasted so pure.

As your vision slowly cleared, you saw the soles of Sans' shoes, planted firmly, protectively in front of you. Above his shoulders something floated, giant and terrifying, like a … snake skull? Dragon skull? It seethed with angry, bright blue magic. The same energy wisped away in the wind from Sans' left eye, though you only saw its remnants from behind.

With the way Flowey cowered in the distance, you realized all at once that they were readying for a fight. You took a weak hold of his ankle.

"Don't hurt him," you rasped.

"heh. don' worry, kid." His eyes went dark. _"it'll be too quick to hurt."_

"Big talk from tiny," Flowey spat, though by his body language he certainly seemed intimidated. A terrible smile soon twisted into life again across his face. "Is that what you told yourself when you tore your soul in half?" His head turned so far left it almost went upside down. "Did _killing yourself_ not go over well for you, trash bag? Thirty-fifth time's the charm. _I think you should try again._ "

The anger in Sans' face deepened.

"Or _I_ could help you out …"

The earth crumbled behind you. As you leaned away reflexively, a heavy vine peeled out of the snow and snapped toward Sans—but before you could warn him, he was gone. Your head spun wildly to see where he had vanished to, and soon enough you found him, dropping out of the air some fifteen feet up. And then he was gone again. And again. And again. It was mesmerizing, watching him flash in and out of reality in bright fragments of blue like cyan crystals. He worked his way closer, barely avoiding vines and thorns and bullets until he finally came down with a quick, clean sucker punch to the flower's face.

"OW!" shouted Flowey.

He rubbed at his cheek with one leaf like a sour child, but he seemed otherwise okay. Then, half of a blue rib cage clawed out of the earth and imprisoned him behind their bars.

Sans bent close, livid. Two of those frightening dragon skulls hovered over his shoulder, mouths open wide. Raging blue magic swirled in their jaws like portals to a very, very bad time.

"touch 'em again and you're off my mercy list for good, dandelion. ya got that?"

"Tsh … whatever …"

"_d_i_d _ i _ h_e_a_r _ a _ '_n_o_' _?_"

Flowey glared up into the empty hollows of Sans' eyes with increasing fury. His leaves curled tightly, impudently, until finally his face twisted into something evil. A small earthquake rumbled at your knees.

"I SAID 'W-H-A-T-E-V-E-R,' YOU DEAF IDIOT!" he shrieked.

Sans barely had time to turn his head before the floor gave out from under you, crumbled into pieces with a resounding crunch. You screamed. A den of green snakes had snapped free into the air and shot toward you faster than Undyne's spears. You had no way of evading them, even if you had regained your strength.

 _That's it,_ you thought. _I've messed up for good._

You closed your eyes, preparing for a death you'd felt hundreds of times, but had never before expected to last.

A flash of bright blue filled your vision, and suddenly there were arms around your waist. They pulled you fast into a roller coaster that rocketed from zero to a million in half a breath, ripped you from existence into the invisible space between. _A shortcut._ You warped and spiraled through a million blinding colors until tumbling out onto a cool, damp floor. The arms around you were gone. You heard a distant splash, and then nothing but a steady, hyperactive beeping noise.

The wet, earthen smell of the air told you where you were, even before opening your eyes.

You lifted yourself to your hands and knees. Your body complained in the only way it could: aches and pains. Almost every inch of you hurt like hell, even more where those vines had constricted you like a ball python. It didn't help that you had hit the ground so hard when falling back into reality.

The gears in your head started cranking. _Falling,_ not landing. Sans had never taken you through a shortcut so wildly. It was as if he had lost control.

"Sans?" you called out.

No response but a chorus to tiny stamen voices, shouting his name back to you.

Your eyes flew around the bioluminescent cave interior that was Waterfall. Glowing mushrooms and blue flowers flourished beside their watery mirrors, a surface only disrupted by distantly churning cascades. That persistent, electric refrain of "beep, beep, beep" was slowing steadily, difficult to pinpoint when every wall echoed its rhythm in perfect time. You found Sans anyway, half submerged in a pool of glowing water.

He wasn't moving.

You scrambled over to him, dragged him out onto drier land. Some of that luminous blue water lingered in the fabric of his clothes, dribbled out over the stone in a clear path away from the riverbank. You cradled his head gently into your lap, never more afraid in your life.

The half-open recesses of his eye sockets remained dark, even as you called his name. You shook him lightly. No response.

The beeping sound, you realized, was coming from Sans' coat pocket. You fished inside for what you'd already guessed was his phone. On the screen, a digital graph had spiked into the red, but was gradually slipping down into cooler tones. Those hand symbols again. What on earth were they? Some strange monster code? A dialect or language you didn't speak?

You dropped your hand to your side as if it weighed a hundred pounds. This wasn't right. You looked at your surroundings, at the insensible figure of your friend, at the phone in your hand. _None_ of this was right. It was all messy, all wrong, all your fault for bungling time into stupid, self-righteous knots. Your throat constricted and your eyes began to burn. Why couldn't you have just been satisfied?

Just a few moments later, your heart skyrocketed as Sans' hand lifted to massage the now furrowed curve of his forehead. He hissed in pain, propped himself up on one elbow.

"pretty sure i flattened that weed in a past life," he grumbled.

You laughed and threw your arms around his neck. He doubled back.

"I'm sorry," you said, muffled in the fur of his hood. "I shouldn't have gone off on my own. I'm so sorry."

His eye sockets widened suddenly, as if he'd forgotten all the details until then. He huffed a sigh and ruffled your hair. "my bad for leaving you alone, kiddo," he said. He cautiously backed out of the hug, at which point his eye lights dashed over your many scrapes and bruises. "you okay?"

"Um." You held out that still-vibrating rectangle. "Your phone was going crazy …"

He looked at you a little longer, as if he couldn't care less about that. When the repetition got to him, though, he took the device from your hands and silenced it.

"I guess your shortcuts are back?" you asked.

He nodded slowly, pensively. He didn't mention the burn in his soul or its loosened seams. "kinda over-encouraged the snail, though."

You wished he wouldn't be so nonchalant. Neither of you were in good shape, and from experience, this particular channel of Waterfall only endangered you more. You remembered, however, a secluded cave offshoot with a mouse-hole and some oddly-crystallized cheese just a few minutes from here. If you made it there safely, you could lie low and recover while saving your resources.

You floated the idea to Sans, and he agreed. As you moved to stand, however, he stopped you with a hand on your shoulder. You noticed it was shaking, just a little.

"eh, hold up a sec, bud," he said. "let's at least take care o' the nicks and knots before you go spelunking."

You shook your head.

"c' _mon_ ," he said playfully. "would i offer if i wasn't up for it?"

"You _know_ what it does to you …"

"frisk."

You bit your tongue at how softly he'd said your name. His eye lights dimmed, and you immediately understood that this was for more than practical reasons.

"just lemme have this," he said.

It had been a long, long time since Sans had healed you. Usually, he had left the task to someone like Toriel or Papyrus, maybe even Alphys, but in a small handful of moments he'd felt compelled to shoulder the responsibility. It had never been particularly pretty. Even small injuries would pull the spark out of his eyes, while Toriel could practically raise the dead before heaving a sigh.

As he braced your head between his hands, warmth flooded down over your body like the first few droplets of a hot shower. Your headache slowly subsided. Your abrasions and contusions lessened. Though the sensation threatened to lull you to sleep, you watched him intently, searching for the smallest sign that he'd pushed himself too far.

"heh … 's a little better, at least," he said, as the power faded from his fingers. " _and_ all your cinnabunnies 're accounted for."

You smiled, still aching and bruised but noticeably better. You were glad to know he had sensed his limit. Still, as always, just a little bit of life had left his eyes.

* * *

"He always calls me 'Chara,'" you said, as you traced the waters edge farther down the channel. "It's like that horrible thing he went through is constantly at the front of his mind, and it's all he can do to cope."

"can't face the real one, so he projects the role onto you?"

"I guess."

"hmm." Sans glanced through the waterfall now dividing you. "almost feel sorry for 'im."

You passed the stream of glowing blue and turned to face him. "Almost?"

He spread his hands and smiled. "plant just tried to snuff ya, kiddo. little hard for me to empathize."

You had to give him that. Still, you frowned and crossed your arms.

"Imagine how you'd feel if you lost your brother right in front of you," you said, "and there was something you could have done to stop it. Would you be able to live with that?"

Sans' grin fell flat. You'd never seen his face more haunted, as if the words had struck closer to home than intended. He turned his eyes away from you and said nothing, and continued to say nothing for a very, very long time. When you glanced behind you a few moments later, you saw he walked with his hand to his chest, frowning at the walls.

"you think that's why you always find him there?" he asked quietly. "in the ruins."

"What do you mean?"

"the flower patch." At your silence, he added, "tori took the body with her, when she left. buried the kid there." His dim eyes finally sought you out. "thought you knew."

You hadn't.

It all made sense, suddenly: the empty coffin engraved with Chara's name, Toriel's return to the garden after sparing her, Asriel's final journey to the start before vanishing forever. Your sympathy for the flower intensified, when you thought of him returning to visit the grave.

As you walked down the long, narrow tunnel just outside your destination, Sans' phone began chiming intermittently. He shuffled to a halt halfway through the pass, staring at the screen. He smacked it.

"What's up?" you asked.

He didn't answer you immediately. Whatever was on the display flashed so quickly it illuminated his face in a rainbow of alternating colors. When he tore his eyes from it, he forced a small, uncertain smile.

"it's saying everything's cool, but … not? i ain't diggin', honestly. thing's contradicting itself." He chugged the air in preparation of a hefty sigh. "maybe it funked up on the way out, or …"

As your eyes scraped along the rock formations around you, the color drained from your face. This nondescript cave wall, this empty road with nothing special to show on its skin, held a troubling secret underneath. You'd only glimpsed it, and though your mind instructed you to forget, you never truly could.

Sans caught the chill that ran up your spine. "bud?" he asked. "y'okay?"

"There's … a grey door here," you said quietly. "Sometimes. I've only seen it once, but …"

"a door?" Sans notched his brow, concern visibly growing. "don't tell me ya went in."

When you stared at him uneasily, his frown deepened.

"There was a monster inside," you said, looking to the dark shadow where the door had once stood. "He was … sad, I think … just standing there, alone, frozen in the center of the room. There was something wrong with him, though, like that wasn't how he was supposed to look. He was twisted, disfigured, and his face was … cracked apart at the eyes, almost like what used to be a … a skull …"

You heard Sans' phone hit the ground with a sharp smack. When you turned to him, his spine had gone rigid, his eye lights snuffed, his hand shaking.

"Sans?" you asked cautiously.

He didn't respond. It frightened you to see him so overcome, especially after what Papyrus had said to you. It was important, you told yourself, to remain calm. Whatever ledge he wavered on, you needed to step him back from it slowly and carefully. You inched nearer.

"Sans …"

"where did he go," he whispered.

"What?"

 _"where did he go?"_

Sans had taken a small step-turned-shortcut to stand directly in front of you and seized your arms so urgently it startled you. The pupil of his left eye flared to life again in blue and yellow, flashing sharp and insistent.

"He disappeared!" you blurted. "When I touched him. It's like he couldn't hold himself there and just … poofed."

Sans' eyes, more desperate than you'd ever seen, darted over you as if scouring for the smallest trace of a lie. You could feel, then, that same power he'd used to scan your soul in Judgment Hall, that sensation of piercing sunlight seeking to cast a shadow. Then, when he'd found nothing but flatland inside you, everything softened: his eyes, his posture, his hold of you. He let go.

As he stepped back, he covered his face with both hands and breathed an apology. Then came another, and another. They rolled out his mouth like a small river, inaudible if not for the echoing cave walls. You couldn't be sure, but by the sound of them, they weren't directed at you.

You eased a hand onto his back and caressed the fleece of his coat. It took him a second to clear his head, but eventually he lowered his hands from his eyes. They were dark, emptier than you'd ever seen.

"Did you know him?" you asked.

You only received silence as an answer.

* * *

The next room was as dry and safe as you remembered. That crystallized cheese on a table had always come across as nonsensical to you, placed with no obvious purpose but to taunt the mouse nearby. Retrieving the snack seemed an unattainable goal, but you had once seen yourself in that small creature, running after something impossible to achieve but determined to succeed. Both of you had won in the end, and yet here you were, unsatisfied with your reward.

Sans didn't speak the rest of the evening. Instead, he stared into his hands or his phone, or your head on his knee. While you drifted off to sleep, lulled by tiny rodentian snores, he sat awake, gazing off into the hallway you'd left behind.

Could it really be _him?_ Was he _… alive?_ Or was this some cruel echo, a vain hope he sought to grasp based on some vague description of a child's memory. _  
_

After what might have been an hour, Sans slipped out from under you and tiptoed to the end of the small cavern. He checked one last time to ensure you were still sleeping, then turned away and disappeared into the dark of the tunnel.

The emptiness felt to stretch forever. He could hardly calculate how long it took him to reach the center of the pass, where his phone had been most troublesome, where you had told him a story he almost wished he hadn't heard. The alarm started going off again, more grating against his ears when ablaze in silence. He hoped you wouldn't hear.

A door that was there … sometimes.

He didn't want to look. He kept his eyes to the earth, so afraid to lift them they felt to weigh more than Mount Ebott above. But when he finally did, his bones nearly caved away, as if drawn into the void itself.

A door that was there … _this time_.

He shivered. A cold, cold aura pawed through the cracks in want of escape. Its claws hooked on his feet and his ankles, calling to him, begging him. The door felt too tall, somehow, but he didn't question it. The only thing he wondered was if he should break the seal, if he should test fate, if he should put his very existence on the line for a glimpse of a phantom.

But he had to know.

He reached out his hand to the doorknob.

He had to see it for himself.

When he walked through, it was as blinking his eyes, and when he opened them he wasn't where he thought he'd be. He realized he was lying down, staring up at an all-too-familiar ceiling in a dim, unkempt room. Instead of a door, the cold was slipping through the nearby window, past which powdery white fell in a loosely-woven sheet. Snow. _Always snow._ The same as yesterday, and the day before, and the day before …

His chest felt to crumble. Reset sickness overcame him, the kind that had his stomach reel, the one that burned his brain in a feeble attempt to reject him.

No.

No, this couldn't be happening.

Not again.

He breathed hard, fast, head in his hands. Papyrus' morning song drifted up to him from the kitchen.

The kid said it was over. Why would they lie?

He tore at his skull until it split at the eyes, one fissure high on the left, one fissure low on the right …

Why would they turn back now?

His soul started ripping apart on its own, snapping, chipping away piece by piece by …

Sans bolted wide awake beside a table and some cheese entrapped in purple glass. He gasped. As his eyes spun wildly around his surroundings, he slowly became aware that this was reality, not the nightmare he'd just come from. There had been no reset. There had been no door. And yet he could still feel those searing cracks building, tearing their way through his soul like an eggshell under pressure.

 _Crack._

Panic dug under his sternum like a sharp knife. _stop,_ he thought desperately to himself. _stop it, you're okay, it wasn't real._

 _Crack._

 _pull yourself together. you can't leave the kid like that. they've only got one shot, they could …_

He realized your head still rested on his lap. You had slept straight through that startled jump back to reality, curled cozily close as if nothing could harm you when at his side. He slowly, shakily slipped his fingers into the mess of your dark brown hair.

 _keep sleeping,_ he asked you in his heart. _don't look at this mess._

He knew that if you saw him crumbling, you would only blame yourself. He couldn't let you see that he was suffering, that sleeping had been impossible for him, that the last few times he'd closed his eyes he'd conjured only nightmares. He couldn't let you see the cost of a hundred resets, time-turns you had instigated even if it had been his own finger that pulled the trigger on himself. He couldn't let you see how he really felt.

How he really was.

 _"So, my skeleton, please, tell me … how are you?"_

"i'm …"

When Toriel had asked him this, he had failed to think of words, failed to birth anything but the dust of emotions she'd just breathed into a flying fury. He laughed just a bit, a rueful little quiver of a thing that hardly held any humor.

"i think i'm barely holdin' on?" he had said. "my soul looks like it's been through a wood-chipper and i don't know if i'm gonna make it. i'm … scared." He looked up into the warm empathy of her burgundy eyes. "i don't wanna die anymore."

 _that's right,_ he thought now. _i don't want to die anymore._ He held onto that thought like a lifeline, and the pain in his soul slowly eased. _i **don't want** to die._

You snuggled closer to him, unconsciously searching for warmth. You needed him, he remembered. You _cared_ about him. If he couldn't pull through for himself, he could do it for you …

He looked out into the hallway he'd only revisited in sleep.

… and maybe for _him,_ too.

* * *

 _ **A/N:** Oh, boy! Getting into some more plot-heavy stuff. Not many notes for you this time.  
_

 _ **Cross-posting!** I've started uploading on Tumblr ("riftfic")! Only the first two chapters up so far, but it's a start. I also plan to get the ball rolling on Archive of Our Own this weekend? Username there is also "scians." **  
**_

**_New Cover!_** _I made cover art for this! I mean I made the last cover too, but kind of cobbled it together from another piece of fan art I'd made forever ago. You can see it full res on the tumblr page. There's more fan art on my main blog, if you're into that. You can get to it through the FAQ section. :)_

 ** _Up Next!_** _Smells a little fishy. NGAHHH!_

 _Thank you for reading! If you have thoughts or feelings I love to hear them._


	6. Scales

_**A/N:** Hey, guys! Thought it would be helpful to lay down a few truths surrounding the story, just for some clarity moving forward. Stating them so plainly isn't exactly necessary to the plot and would honestly feel too inorganic to explain in the script itself, but they are something I keep mental note of while writing._

 _ **Frisk has never chosen the genocide path.** In fact, it's never even occurred to them as an option. This is probably the most important thing to keep in mind for … reasons. _

_**"Loads" don't exist,** at least not in the typical sense. There are no stars / save points. My interpretation of a "load" is that Frisk's determination pulled back time just a little bit whenever they died, rather than a lot. By destroying the "Reset," which I described as a button for clarity (and to be more symbolic than anything), they relinquished all power over time. _

_**Frisk and Sans lived together on the surface for a little under three years.** This is why Frisk doesn't speak or think like an eleven-year-old, and why their relationship is so familial. (While I brought this up in Chapter 2, I thought it might be helpful to spell it out a little more plainly.)_

 _I hope that adds some context! I wish I could just tell you everything (I'm practically bursting), but that wouldn't be fair. If there's anything you still wonder about, I'll be happy to clarify—assuming it isn't a spoiler, of course. :)_

 _Hope you enjoy!_

* * *

In the deeper reaches of Waterfall, the air smelled crisp and heavy with minerals like an old, abandoned mine shaft. Very little could be seen through the dark here. The caves glowed only faintly, illuminated by the dim blacklight of stray mushrooms and distant blue rivers. Even the crash of rushing water struggled to reach this far, barely echoes off the walls. To you, it was as standing in a peaceful vacuum.

"uh-huh. uh-huh. okay, cool. sure." Sans leaned against the wall just outside Gerson's shop, phone to the side of his head. He tapped his fingers inside his coat pocket, absently watching you make friends at the riverside.

Save for the vicious return of that throbbing headache, your injuries had recovered. It worried you, then, to notice that Sans seemed only worse by contrast. His movements were slower, his quips not nearly as inspired. Though he had insisted he slept the past few nights, you had difficulty believing that past the blue rings of his drooping eye sockets. His mind, too, had seemed to wander off somewhere else … ever since mentioning that grey door.

He still wouldn't talk about it.

The air sung with white noise: waterfalls crashing, echo flowers murmuring, crickets chirping. Everything about this place made Sans want to float down and sleep, and not just because he'd been so starved of shuteye. As he listened to his brother's monologue, his needs began to overrule willpower. His eyelids started falling. His head slipped low on his shoulders. He nodded off.

His name burst through the speaker loudly enough to be heard across the cave. You turned just in time to see his eyes snap open, his shoulders sharpen. His phone spun wildly out of his hand. Just before it touched the ground, he managed to catch it in a cloud of blue magic. He hissed an expletive and shakily lifted the device to his tympanic cavity. After this many sleepless nights, the adrenaline was just a little too much to handle.

"yeah, i'm listenin'," he breathed into the receiver. He stretched to increase his magic flow, but cut himself short as the voice chattered a little more quietly into his ear. "i'm fine, bro. really. don' sweat it."

You sauntered back over to him cheerfully despite your headache. Monster Kid never failed to flip even your worst day on its head. You brought your mood into question, though, when Sans' eyes opened wide.

"oh. you did, huh?" He smiled at you a little strenuously, a failed mask for his anxiety. "heh. yeh … i'm sure they'll be _great_ friends. okay. okay. _okay_. gotta go."

He hung up and grimaced at you plainly. You narrowed your eyes.

"He told Undyne where we were, huh," you said.

Sans mirrored Papyrus' usual gallant stance: one hand on his hip, the other on his chest. "WORRY NOT!" he said in a surprisingly accurate imitation. "THE GREAT PAPYRUS HAS EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL!"

Gerson guffawed around the corner.

"Last time he 'had it under control,' he told her exactly what I was wearing," you said.

Sans giggled. "yeah, he's a trip. but forgettaboutit. this ain't the seven bridges of königsberg. if it comes down to it, i can handle her."

At that, you bit your lip apprehensively. You had been avoiding Undyne for the better part of two days, now. Though Sans' help had certainly been appreciated when dodging Mad Dummy's rockets and the attacks of other monsters through Waterfall, the fish captain would present a much more complicated challenge. You took Sans' sleeve and pulled him gently away into a more private niche.

"Sans," you said quietly, "you can't help me on this one."

His smile drooped indignantly. "come again?"

"Undyne won't listen to words," you said. "You _know_ her. No matter what any of us say, she's not going to back down through a conversation. She's all action. The only way to win her over is to _show_ her I'm not here to fight."

As you were speaking, the hardened edges of his eye lights softened with understanding, though reluctantly.

"kid, her teeth ain't even the sharpest thing about her."

"I know," you said, "but I've faced her enough times to know what to do. So, please … trust me on this?"

He hesitated once more, but his squared shoulders eventually rounded. The tiniest twist of a smile slipped across his face. "trusted you this far, right?"

* * *

As you waded through the deep, dark caverns of Waterfall, Sans followed distantly alongside you, occluded behind a tapestry of tall grass and stalagmites. He had told himself to teleport away, to sit at his station at the edge of Hotland and wait for you there, but he simply couldn't bring himself to err on the side of fate. His eyes followed carefully instead, darting between you and the phone screen in his hand.

Though the device had remained set to silence, its colors and symbols shuddered every so often as if disturbed. He frowned thoughtfully. Scanning the local rock and wildlife had told him next to nothing, at least not the ones he had investigated directly. Maybe he wasn't guessing right. His fingers swiped and tapped a few buttons in preparation of an area-wide sweep instead.

Just as he initiated the command, the foliage to his left crinkled like old paper. His spine stiffened, more rigid than a block of petrified wood as the disruption was soon followed by the steady rhythm of clashing metal. His head turned slowly left, and there he found himself to face with a tall, heavily armored figure. Though that polished pewter helmet hid her countenance from view, only one person could honorably wear this captain's armor of the royal guard.

Sans and Undyne regarded each other silently, breathing each other's air, breaching each other's aura. As a sentry, he had expected to sense something like rage, disappointment, maybe even hatred from his superior … but he felt nothing even close. Though intimidating in the way her shoulders spread firm like an iron beam, her demeanor had become strangely resigned when looking at him.

He knew, without a word, exactly what she wanted from him.

She wanted him to step aside.

She studied him in silence a few dreadful seconds longer, then looked to the bridge overpass, where you and that armless young monster now spoke. Sans followed her gaze. How could she mistake your kindness, he wondered. If actions were all that mattered to her, hadn't your open arms already defined you?

By the time he reeled in his gaze, she had disappeared into the darkness of Waterfall. Without her looming over him, he realized how rigidly he was standing. He released a held breath and struggled to catch up on the others he'd left behind.

His phone buzzed in his hand: results cultivated. He'd almost forgotten. As he scrolled through the mountains of information, his fingers stopped dead on a block of bright red symbols. His eye sockets spread into dark circles like new moons.

* * *

It saddened you every time Monster Kid tried to end your newborn friendship, even though you knew it couldn't be more than a thirty-second hiatus. In the past, now only a possible future, you had become fairly close. You had attended school together, eaten lunch together, held sleepovers together at the skeleton brothers' house… . You had lived alongside him long enough to know his heart beat with too much saccharin to despise anything at all, let alone another creature. So the moment Undyne showed herself at the end of the bridge and MK stumbled to dangle by his teeth, you never had to fake your desire to save him. You threw yourself to your knees, reached out a hand …

The stomach-wrenching sensation of a shortcut swallowed you whole. Time and space distorted, then peeled back the fabric of reality to swap twenty meters for a single step. It chewed you up and spat you out onto damp earth, safe from the ledge and the abyss. You propped yourself up on your elbows. Your head was roaring in pain. The end of the bridge rested just before you and your armless friend, and there, on the opposite side, stood Undyne. She tore off her helmet. You'd never seen such absolute fury.

" _Sans!"_ she snarled.

You looked up. There he stood beside you, panting just a little, brow knit in a mixture of urgency and dread.

"Hand over that human punk or go back to your station!" she said.

Sans slipped his hands into his pockets and walked to stand like a locked gate at the end of the bridge. His pupils never left her.

"make like a bullet, kiddo," he muttered to you over his shoulder.

Monster Kid wasted no time getting out of there, but you … you stayed put. A frown slowly grew on your face. The implications of what he'd just done buried thorns in the pit of your stomach, and you weren't sure how long you could ignore them. You set your teeth. Your nails clawed into the ground.

"Sans …" you began.

Undyne growled. A long streak of blue light sparked under her outstretched hand. She snagged a newly formed spear and targeted you before you could even finish his name.

Sans vanished in splash of cyan, only to reappear instantly at Undyne's shoulder. Just as she moved to throw her weapon, he shoved her to the side. Her magic smashed off-mark into the left wall of the cave. Damp rock shattered and fell into a cloud of debris just meters from where you knelt. After a moment's heart-stopping delay, the sound of splashing of rocks below ricocheted back up to you—fifty feet down at least.

You knew you had to run.

As you pushed away from the bridge, the last thing you saw was Undyne's arm stretching back to take aim again. Several spears manifested at once under her hand this time.

You could only assume Sans interfered. None of the weapons hit their target, only showering you in rock particles as they collided with the walls around you. Round after round came closer and closer to striking you. You braced yourself for each explosion, until one last time, the force threw you to your knees with exponentially more power than expected.

A flash of brilliant white cast an infinitely long shadow ahead of you, but lingered only one second before devouring it. The earth shivered. When you fought the reverberations enough to look back, a bright beam of magic had engulfed the cave behind you. Your eyes widened to recognize the dragon skull at its head, screaming white-hot energy out unhinged jaws.

Your instincts had been right to be terrified of it.

By the time that skeletal apparition and its energy dispersed, the bridge was gone—and so were Sans and Undyne.

* * *

Far below, dark cave water undulated as the ocean in a storm, dancing to the rhythmless beat of rocks and planks. Without bioluminescent algae in the lake, only the soft glow of mushrooms illuminated this shadowy ravine. The waves glistened to catch their light, until slowly, everything settled back into a placid, glass-like plane.

Its peacefulness shattered all over again. An armored figure tore through the water's surface like Grendel from the swamp. Though she could breathe it well enough, Undyne thrust the liquid from her lungs to draw air instead. A murderous growl slipped past the razors of her teeth. Her golden eye darted wildly around the dim cavern, until finally it found its mark: a small skeleton, materializing from blue magic at the water's edge.

 _"I should fucking kill you,"_ she said.

Sans chuckled humorlessly and spread his arms wide. "not happy to _sashimi?_ "

She cast a blue spear just over his head. The limestone wall behind him cracked, scattering small rocks into the water. He shoved his hands in his pockets, then, eyes snuffed, false grin spread wide.

Laden with such heavy armor, it took far longer to drag herself out of the water than she cared to admit. When she finally made it to shore, she spared no time heaving him to eye level by the collar of his jacket. His eye sockets remained dark, his smile frozen.

"You're lucky Papyrus is your brother or you'd be _dust_ right now, you traitor," she hissed into his face. "Did you forget your fucking _job?_ "

"i dunno what hot dogs got to do with this," he said coyly. "i mean hot cats, _maybe_ …"

She threw him down onto his feet again. He staggered, snickering. As she observed the blatant exhaustion with which he carried himself, however, her frown became something else, originating from a different place in her heart altogether.

"Go home, Sans," she said, a little more calmly. She shifted feet and looked uncomfortably away. "Papyrus told me what happened."

Sans said nothing for a few long moments.

"You look _rough_ , man," she said. "Like, _really_ rough. Like I don't even need to do a check to know something's up. You should be taking it easy right now, cracking jokes at MTT Resort or hanging at Grillby's, something _chill_ , something other than … _committing treason_ for this human you barely even know!"

"did papyrus also tell ya that _human_ saved my life?" he asked quietly.

Undyne didn't answer that.

He looked at her, then, pupils dim but at least present. "that kid's the only reason i'm not blowin' in the wind right now."

"They're still a human."

"heh, yeah." Sans looked away, smile slipping. "forgot you're a one-track mind."

Undyne's glare returned, though diminished significantly as her eyes trailed to a hard tear in the side of his dark blue coat. Small traces of dust caught the dim light, just enough to let her know more than his clothes had been struck.

"Sans, did _I_ …"

"kid'll be waitin' for ya at the tunnel before hotland," he interrupted as he stepped midway into a shortcut. He closed one eye above half a smile. "don' be late."

* * *

Just before the following set of bridges, you skidded to a halt among echo flowers and dripping stalactites. This passageway, though lit with mushrooms still, was even darker than the ones preceding. The light ahead and the warming atmosphere told you that you were close to Hotland—and what would normally be your final conflict with Undyne.

You threw your hands down onto your knees and gasped for breath. Though you were fairly sure Sans had delayed her long enough to give you ample time, you had been running nonstop. You couldn't risk stopping, not until now. Your head throbbed even more harshly than before, and that much you regretted.

As everything that had happened caught up to you, you glared at the rocks below your feet. Of all encounters in the Underground, Undyne's was probably the most important to happen seamlessly. If she didn't see enough evidence of your kindness and recognize you as friend rather than foe, _everything_ would fall apart. There was a sliver of hope it could still work out that way, but … just by stepping between you, Sans had jeopardized it all.

As if you'd just drawn a pentagram in ketchup and said his name, Sans popped into existence right beside you.

"you okay?" he asked breathlessly. He snatched you by the shoulders, scoured you from head to toe for damages. "those last few shots coulda scalped ya …"

You smacked his hands away. He buckled.

 _"Yeah, thanks a bunch, Sans. You really had my back, there."_

For a moment, he was lost for words. He'd never heard you snap at him that way before. Even _you_ couldn't remember having spoken with so much venom since the days leading up to your "fall," and yet here you had just spat acid all over him. You couldn't be sure he understood why until his wide eyes softened to half-moons and the tensed corners of his mouth slackened.

"I asked you not to step in!" you said. "I asked you to _trust me!_ "

"trust is supposed to be mutual, kid …"

"All you had to do was _nothing_." The drum of your headache pounded in your ears, drowning everything else out. "You're supposed to be _good at that!_ "

He flinched, hand twitching toward his heart though he forced it into his jacket pocket instead. His brow fell sharply, eyes razor-edged as if a retort brewed behind them, but he chose to bite his tongue.

"fine," he murmured. His dim eyes latched onto the floor. "sorry. i'll keep outta your way."

You were too angry to notice the emptiness of his voice. "Good."

At that, he frowned. He stepped painfully close until his face was within inches of yours. The intimidation you had felt under his gaze in Snowdin crawled across your skin again, even more when his eyes darkened into shadowy pits.

"y'know … that perfect order you're after?" he said. "those _perfect_ steps to the shiny diamond outcome you had before? it ain't happenin' that way, not this time. as hard as you might claw against it or … tiptoe along your 'caution tape,' you're gonna have to come to terms with that sooner or later. and if you wanna deal with it alone, fine … but whatever comes from it, _that's on you._ "

You felt some of your irritation siphon out of you.

He sighed and his eyes relit, however dimly. When he looked at you now, only disappointment and sadness pervaded. Your anger slowly changed hands with regret. He seemed to be experiencing some too.

"it's a good thing you stopped resetting when you did," he said, and vanished just as suddenly as he had returned.

Against no other sound, water dripped with what could only be described as cacophony into small puddles. Not even your breath shuddered waves through the air, but perhaps that was because you weren't breathing.

Just what the hell had overcome you? After what you'd been through—after what _he'd_ been through—you should have at least _tried_ to handle that a little more delicately. You'd hardly given him a chance to explain himself, let alone speak. Headache or no, you'd never been so short-tempered in your life … _right?_ Your brain throbbed just a little harder.

An even more worrisome thought occurred to you. When he said he'd keep out of your way, did he mean … _for good?_ Your stomach churned like a heavy duty spin cycle. Had you just succeeded in driving him away? This guardianship was mutual, you remembered; you were supposed to be keeping an eye on _him_ too. What if he hurt himself again? What if …

You wiped at your face. No. No, Sans would never actually abandon you, not now, not ever _._ He was the closest thing you had to family, and family _never_ … Several human faces jumped to mind, quickly overshadowed your confidence with the doubt of old ghosts. You hugged yourself tightly.

 _A good thing you stopped resetting,_ you thought, staring into the light ahead of you. _What did he mean?  
_

* * *

In his shack of a sentry station just inside Hotland, Sans sat alone. His phone lay cradled between his hands, its screen under the scrutiny of his tired, tired eyes. Though he scoured through the Waterfall results over and over again for even the tiniest mistake, he hadn't misread the information.

His earlier scan had highlighted several points of temporal instability in the cavern—most notably, _the bridge._ The affected areas were shifting through different age states, whether that meant young or ancient or, more frightening still, entirely nonexistent. That platform could have disappeared right out from under you.

Still, he grimaced at himself reproachfully. As much as your attitude had rubbed him the wrong way, it didn't change the fact that he'd done the exact opposite of what you'd asked. You probably would have been safe, if he hadn't jumped in. The bridge's age state fluctuated so quickly it had only disappeared for an imperceptible amount of time before reappearing. Not even he would have known, if not for the data in his hands.

As he watched his scenery dance in the residual, sweltering heat of the lava below, he realized all at once how miserable he felt. Without you here to keep him distracted, every sleepless hour, every crack in his soul, every self-deprecating thought, all piled on him at once like a slip of snow off a branch in winter. His ribs, too, seared with pain where one of Undyne's spears had grazed him just enough to matter. He dizzily pressed a hand to his side and huffed a small, dry laugh. He really must be losing his grip, if he had been that easy to strike.

He struggled to preoccupy himself with charts and data, but found it increasingly hard to focus his eyes. His lightheadedness escalated until it overwhelmed him, rocked his vision of the Underground like a ship at turbulent seas. Hotland became very bright to his senses. He shrank against the interior wall of his sentry station and hid from the glare in the hood of his jacket. He cursed under his breath.

The sound of footsteps and clanking metal snuck up on him. He caught only a glimpse of a swift, blue blur, quickly followed by a red one—Undyne _hot_ on your trail. He smiled wryly. Good one. Guess it was going according to plan after all.

He closed his eyes, then, what he thought was only briefly. With that, the image of Hotland disappeared, replaced with a wall of unpolished wood paneling. It took him a second to understand he had slid off his seat. Without much choice, he remained slumped in the corner of his sentry station, all energy sapped away, his phone well out of reach. He supposed he would just have to stay here until you came back— _if_ you came back.

 _or i guess …_

He lifted his shaking hand from the raw bone of his ribs and rubbed his fingers together. He could feel the fresh dust grinding between them like salt in powdered sugar.

 _… if i don't just give out right here.  
_

* * *

Your chest rose and fell in quick puffs of breath to match the wild beat of your heart. Sweat soaked through the back and neck of your striped sweater. Why did you always wear it, knowing where you headed? Wool was far too warm a fabric for _any_ exercise, let alone here on the edges of Hotland.

Undyne lay collapsed at your feet, practically steaming with heat exhaustion. If there were just a trace of humidity in this arid wasteland, perhaps she wouldn't be so overcome. Thank god for that conveniently-placed water cooler to your right.

You pulled a paper cup from the dispenser and paused, dumbstruck. Had it been your imagination that the container had just … disappeared? Even if only for a split second? You shook the feeling.

You poured the liquid on Undyne's head. She lifted herself to her feet as shakily as before, but this time, a deeper measure of understanding showed itself in the gold of her uncovered eye. She searched you a little longer than you remembered, then turned and walked away toward Waterfall.

You were relieved to know everything had gone as planned, though you had noticed Undyne's attacks had carried more reluctance, maybe even some uncertainty. What did she know that she hadn't before? Had Papyrus said something more to her? Had Sans?

As you watched her armored back lose form behind the swirl of sweltering air, your head pounded just as viciously as before. No amount of sea tea or crab apples could stifle the throb. You wondered if it were just outside monster consumables to fix. What you wouldn't give for some ibuprofen.

Just before you looked away, Undyne reined in your attention once again when she stopped firmly just outside the sentry station.

This was new.

You narrowed your eyes, hoping to discern more through the swimming atmosphere.

Undyne reached inside the structure and lifted something carefully out, though _what_ was difficult to tell. Then, the oil slick of the air cleared enough for you to realize that this something was a _someone_ , and just the right size and shape to be important to you. Your heart skipped out ahead of you. You almost tripped to run so fast across the precarious rock structure, back the way you had come.

You paused outside the hut, breathless, second-guessing yourself. Undyne had already disappeared into the dark of Waterfall before you arrived, and there was no telling where she would go from there. As Sans had said to you more than once … this time wasn't the same.

A faint buzzing sound drew your interest. You looked left, then right, then peered over the counter of the guard post where the vibrations seemed loudest. There, abandoned on the ground like an old quiche, was Sans' phone.

The floor felt to drop out from under you. If his phone were here, then …

All your worst fears came to mind at once. Was he hurt? Had he hurt … _himself?_ Or had one more terrible thing come to pass, what Papyrus feared would send him over the edge into a final cloud of dust? Your hands trembled. Had it been you? Were you the horrible thing? _Was it your fault?_

You picked up the phone and winced at the caller ID. The guy in that photo was one pretty cool dude. His shirt even said so.

You vaguely considered ignoring him. After all, what would you say? But you knew that would only make things worse. You took one deep breath, then two. Then, you dropped your thumb to green and answered.

* * *

 _ **A/N:**_ _Oh boy! So much conflict this chapter. Frisk's attitude sure seems a little abrupt, doesn't it? HMMM._

 _Also, the Tumblr account (riftfic) is up to date! It comes with pictures._

 _Thank you for reading! If you have thoughts or feelings I love to hear them._

 _ **Next Time!**_ _What's up with this grey kid?_


	7. Your Brother

Trying to stay awake was as fighting a losing battle. As Sans felt carried through the Underground, the weather grew steadily cooler and damper, though the plates of armor beside him radiated his bones with a blistering, residual heat. Something about warmth coupled with cool breezes invited him to slumber, even further than his weakness already did. **  
**

As he blinked in and out of consciousness, he caught glimpses of blue light, waterfalls, long ribbons of red fins like hair. Undyne, huh? Well, that was interesting. Guess she really did care about him, after all, or maybe she was just thinking about …

His soul jumped painfully enough to have split. His hand shot out and grappled urgently, however weakly, onto the lip of her breastplate. He managed to meet her eye just briefly before his fingers began to slip.

"don' tell pap …"

He could only hope she heard his whisper before darkness scarfed him down like a hungry dragon. A sinking sensation wiped clean his perception of reality, as if he had dropped into an endlessly deep pool of water and sought the bottom. His consciousness rose away from him as a sheet of diamond bubbles. No … no, he couldn't let himself sleep, not if he could help it. He needed the ungiving ground at his feet. _He needed to know it was real._ He clung to the air pockets, and they pulled him higher again. When he opened his eyes he found himself in a dimly lit room, wrapped in a wad of blankets. Snow fell outside his window …

He jolted awake and quickly wished he hadn't. His spine snapped audibly as he moved, and his joints ached under a cumulative weight like the entire Underground. When he tried to lift his skull, gravity drew it back to the pillow with the strongest of all blue magic.

He dragged his empty eyes across the walls in search of clues. It reassured him to find that, no, he wasn't actually in Snowdin. Rather, he lay flat on a queen size bed, shoes and jacket off, draped in a warm, microfiber blanket.

At the farthest edge of the room, a cylindrical, ceiling-high aquascape tank caught his eyes first. Nothing but plants, algae, tiny snails. Its bioluminescent water spilled cyan light over a modest collection of shonen anime posters and an impeccable taste in decor. Camisoles, boots, and a pair of sweatpants were scattered across the fish scale pattern tiles, hardly a mess at all when compared to his trash dungeon of a room.

Paper drafts for a handwritten letter littered the desk at his bedside. Most had been crumpled and thrown in a recycling bin beneath, but a rough copy still lay out in the open. _Dear Alphys_ … He looked away to the collection of bottles and jars clinging close to the edge, one of which clearly contained a metal polish. The supply ran low, all applied to that heavy suit of armor hanging on its stand in the corner.

When he finally mustered the strength to sit, his side didn't protest as much as expected. He touched his ribs cautiously through the tear in his t-shirt, then picked back the fabric for a better look. He'd never been so well bandaged in his life. A lingering glimmer around the wrappings told him Undyne had used the good stuff, the kind that heals as it protects. By the quiet piano music trailing over to him from under the door, he supposed she was still here if he wanted to thank her …

He quickly reevaluated that thought. Undyne's good Samaritan nature might have only applied to him while incapacitated. If his magic reserves hadn't trickled so low, he would have given her the slip through the walls. He ran his phalanges coarsely across his skull. Perhaps it was just as well to _face the music_ now.

In the next room, Undyne's fingers danced along the ivory white keys of her baby grand with incredible precision. There was a time Sans had thought soft serenity impossible from her hands before coming to understand the sea monster through Alphys' softer eyes. He lingered in the doorway at first, just listening, allowing the gentle pad of keys to quite literally smooth over the rougher edges of his soul. He could have fallen asleep right there if the thought didn't frighten him.

He shuffled silently across the room to watch at her back. After a moment longer of going unnoticed, a grin like a Cheshire cat's spread across his face. He'd given her a fair chance. He leaned forward and, at a lull in her original song, started pounding chopsticks an octave higher.

Undyne's hands crashed into the keys with an ugly, disjointed chord. The piano bench fell clean over. She snapped around to face him, spear in hand, flat on her feet.

Sans kept cool to the end of the pre-chorus before making eye contact.

"sup."

"The hell are you doing?" she snarled. "GO BACK TO SLEEP, RIGHT NOW."

"o cap'n, my cap'n," he laughed, and planted a hand over the blue heart on his t-shirt. "a week ago, woulda been _music to my ears_."

Her sharp, glaring eye followed him like a hawk as he lifted the piano bench back onto its legs.

"guessin' i broke no pillow records."

"Less than an hour, so _go back to bed."_

"nah." He sat down, dropped an elbow with discord onto the highest set of keys. He propped his head against his knuckles and grinned.

They stared each other down in a hard-fought battle of resolve. As stubborn as his superior might be, once Sans set his heels, it could take either the force of an army or one Papyrus to bowl him over. Undyne must have come to a similar conclusion. Either that or she weighed the pros and cons of chucking him across the room like a football and found the cons unfortunately overwhelming. Her spear vanished in a burst of blue embers and she sat down beside him instead.

Sans' dim eyes calmly fell to watch her webbed fingers resume their song. The motions entranced him, invited his mind to mellow into a delightful emptiness of thought.

"ya coulda left me," he said.

Her hands slowed to a stop, but she didn't look at him.

"i'm a traitor, right?"

"You know I couldn't do that to Papyrus."

"heh. yeah, figured."

She bit her lip, clutched the bench beneath her as if bracing for impact. "And," she said, "what he told me this morning. It really … kind of shook me."

A clock on the wall filled their silence with the incremental revolution of its second hand. Crickets chirped outside the window, through which Waterfall's soft blue glow failed to battle the kitchen's artificial light. Compared to the state of her room, this hardwood space had been kept surprisingly clean: a sterile, orderly front.

"bet ya saw my soul if you were up under my shirt," he said.

"Uh." Some color burned in Undyne's face. "A little? Guh, skeletons are gross."

"live up to the expectation?"

Undyne's good eye softened, then, though her gaze remained fixated elsewhere. "Sans … you should be with Papyrus."

"that bad, huh?"

"I've never seen anything like it. It's like I was looking at a dead man walking."

He burst out laughing at the double entendre.

 _"I wasn't making a joke,"_ said Undyne.

"sorry."

The wording brought back a memory, percolated through a tightly-woven cloth into something completely unrecognizable. Someone had made a similar statement not long ago, he thought, but he couldn't remember who, or where, or when. It burned at the back of his brain, but he chose to forget it for now.

"I don't care how it ended up like that," said Undyne. "I don't give two fucks what you do to yourself, but …"

"thanks."

"If … _someone else_ … ended up in the same situation …"

Undyne's shoulders had slumped, and her hand caressed the smooth, ultramarine scales of her bare arm. The bright gold of her open eye stared off through her bedroom wall, on to a cluttered desk and a pile of half-written letters.

Sans' eye lights dimmed with understanding.

"I want to know what they did," said Undyne gently, "to change your mind."

Sans slid off the piano seat and circled the instrument thoughtfully. His memory sifted through images: your hand in his, your arms at his back, your thumbs battling eye socket waterfalls. Even if remnants of your last exchange embittered its edges, he couldn't help smiling.

"they made a future seem worth the wait," he said.

* * *

Your head still throbbed, albeit distantly when astral projected among galaxies at the farthest reaches of space. Though your body lay flat on the wood panels of Napstablook's oddly asymmetrical home, your soul floated on nothing tangible, only air, only feelings. You were a tiny, insignificant piece of garbage, drifting through the universe …

Something stirred in your memory among the cosmos, a dark pocket of absolute emptiness. You hadn't noticed it there before. You approached but found you couldn't venture too close; your metaphorical hand shied away nearly of its own accord as if faced with the current of an electric fence. Leave it alone, said your cerebrum; you're better off without it. But if you could only reach it, maybe then your headache would …

What time was it?

You jumped back to reality and checked the clock on Sans' phone. You sighed in relief. Perfect. Papyrus should be waiting for you outside Undyne's house in just a few minutes, as he said he would for his super special, super secret, one-on-one training.

Though your session of "feeling like garbage" had officially ended, you still felt like trash. You'd been honest enough to tell Papyrus that you and Sans had been separated, but flat out lied when asked where he'd gone. You couldn't bring yourself to describe that last glimpse of Sans, carried off into the dark, limp in Undyne's arms.

As you approached that colossal fish monument in the neighboring lot, you kept your eyes peeled for a tall, flamboyantly costumed skeleton. Your heart practically drank a vat of helium and soared to the surface when you discovered a skeleton of nearly opposite caliber instead. Sans stood just a short distance outside Undyne's door beside her practice mannequin, searching through his pockets with a worried frown.

You didn't stop to speculate what you might say or do when you got there. Your feet snatched the cave floor ahead of you in long strides, hurtling you to his side before the rest of you had even caught on. At only a few meters away, however, Sans' eyes found yours, and you slowed to a halt. You'd never seen those sockets hollow out so fast … when looking at _you_.

Neither of you said a word, fishing for answers in a lake of silence. Standing here so still was as drinking the perpetual night of Waterfall with an unquenchable thirst, so much so you became a part of it, an echo flower with no voice or song. One too many seconds passed. You clenched your fists until your nails came close to drawing blood. You couldn't stand it. You opened your mouth.

"you don' happen to have my phone," Sans interjected quietly, "do ya? dropped it somewhere."

"Oh." You surfaced the device from your own pocket and shyly handed it back to him.

Both of you lingered there, holding onto the cell phone as if it were the only thing linking you together, as if letting go would bring the barrier itself between you. As your hands inevitably parted, the gap between you become almost tangible. You both chose to speak again at the same exact time.

"kid, look, i …"

"Tell me you're okay," you said.

He stared at you a long moment. "no."

A knot tied in the pit of your stomach.

He sighed regretfully, then, and jabbed a thumb back toward the mannequin nearby. "don't be a _dummy."_

"WHAT? _WHAT?_ " it shrieked.

"o'course i'm okay," he chuckled. "was just kiddin'."

You didn't think so, and your face told him as much. When he slid his phone into his coat pocket, you noticed that massive tear in his side and the faint glow of Undyne's bandages shining through. You weren't entirely sure what you were looking at, but that rip in his clothes hadn't been there before.

He caught where you had hooked your eyes and pinned his arm against the evidence.

"What happened to your … ?"

"nothin' happened to nothin'."

"But your coat …"

"my half of the story ain't ever been important, kiddo, so don't go chalkin' it up now," he said calmly. "i shouldn't have butted in like i did. that's all there is to it."

"Sans."

As his eyes drifted behind you, his grin flickered back to full strength. "chaperone's here."

Behind you, Papyrus was running at breakneck speed from the direction of the ferry, waving his hand in wide sweeps above his head. You waved back, but when you realized Sans had left your peripheral, you turned back. You found him stepping away slowly, his bones disappearing in a flurry of cyan blue.

"catch ya later, bud," he said with a small salute.

Then, he was gone.

As your eyes locked onto the dark patch of mossy earth where Sans had once stood, you wondered with a heavy heart if he meant it.

* * *

Sans tore through space onto a damp stone floor among tall grass and muddy riverbanks. He staggered, steadied himself with a hand on his sweat-dampened forehead. Teleporting with such limited magic was probably a mistake, he thought, even if just around the bend. Talking to the two of you right now, however, handling your worry, your _pity_ , would be a far worse punishment than this lightheadedness.

He followed the scenic route through Waterfall with no destination, only wandering for peace of mind. He found his zen on the long network of bridges over the deepest, darkest lake in the Underground, a stretch of water several miles wide. He meandered across the wooden slats, staring past the edge into an overwhelming void that haunted him in its nothingness. The bridge creaked and bent with age under his feet, infirm and ancient, standing through magical reinforcement alone. From the way his phone vibrated in his pocket, he wondered if this overpass suffered from the same temporal instability as the one he'd destroyed when facing Undyne.

It had been no question to him that resetting repeatedly could deepen the cracks in time's already weakened shell. If the damage were great enough to touch Waterfall, he worried for anyone in Hotland, the Core, the Capital.

If the rift were spreading, could he even do anything about it? For decades, he'd slaved away in his basement with nothing to show. The machine was simply unfixable. He was lacking the parts … and the genius. If things were dire enough, maybe he could he ask for help from …

His soul somersaulted with panic. _Alphys_. If things were breaking apart as he feared, Undyne had more reason to worry than she knew. The dinosaur monster faced more danger than anyone, living as close to the source as she did. Just the thought of losing yet another person he cared about to that thing …

He pulled out his phone, closed down the temporal sensor app, and opened his text message inbox. He scrolled nervously through a small pile of messages he'd ignored until then.

 _ **Alphys** (Tues, 4:55 PM): "go right"  
 **Alphys** (Tues, 4:58 PM): "r u guys ok"  
 **Alphys** (Tues, 4:59 PM): "pls text back"  
 **Alphys** (Tues, 5:20 PM): "oh i see you now!"  
 **Alphys** (Tues, 5:20 PM): "HOW DID U GET TO WATERFALL SO FAST OMG"_

 _ **Alphys** (Today, 1:20 PM): "u ok?"_

He sighed through the hollows of his sinus cavity. It was pointless for him to wonder if Undyne had told her. In the Underground, Alphys' eyes bordered on the omniscient. Her cameras could be watching him right now, for all he knew. Odds were she had seen nearly everything.

 _ **Sans** (3:40 PM): "chipper. you?"  
 **Alphys** (3:40 PM): "same, i guess."_

Though relieved to receive a response, he knew they only lied to each other. Alphys' self-esteem issues were no secret to him. Even before the determination experiments had torn her down to new depths, she had always struggled for confidence.

 _ **Alphys** (3:42 PM): "u know u can talk to me, right?"  
 **Sans** (3:45 PM): "yeah. same goes for you, alph."  
 **Alphys** (3:45 PM): "thx. we should hang out"_

He smiled. His eyes were drawn ahead of him, however, when presented with the shape of a child—a silhouette he recognized immediately as Monster Kid, though something was off. The person that stood at the edge of the bridge overlooked the darkness as stiff as a statue.

"hey, bud," Sans said with a forced smile. He pocketed his phone politely. "what's the hold-up? thought you were headed home."

"Have you ever thought about a world where everything is exactly the same, except you don't exist?" said the monster child quietly.

"uh …"

"Everything functions perfectly without you." She dropped her head and laughed contritely. "The thought terrifies me."

Sans felt what little color he did have run out of him. That voice was _definitely_ not right. Something about it grated against his senses like sandpaper, as if he shouldn't be hearing it, as if the very universe fought its presence. It ran a cold finger up every rib and vertebra with a harsh chill he hadn't felt since … since when?

The monster turned to him to reveal empty white eyes and a blank expression. Her entire body was grey, and not simply because the environment starved for light. She lacked any hue whatsoever, unnaturally so. Sans couldn't keep from wondering if she were even really there.

"Oh," the child murmured. "It's you."

"heh … _sure is,"_ he muttered uneasily, taking a step backward.

"Sans, right?" Goner Kid continued. "He talks about you a lot … when his mind's there."

Sans froze, stiff as a board. His eyes widened to full circles, the lights of his pupils reduced to pinpricks.

"who does?" he whispered, never more afraid of an answer in his life.

"The doctor," she said, smiling with something akin to admiration. "Your brother."

 **W_i_n_g_d_i_n_g_s _ G_a_s_t_e_r_.**

* * *

Your hangout with Undyne followed all the usual steps, if not for a few slight differences in words and gestures. As you sat across her at the freshly broken table, however, holding your scalding hot mug of golden flower tea, the conversation took a different turn than expected.

"It's funny you chose tea," Undyne said quietly. She picked at the edges of her fish-shaped cup and glanced behind her to the closed door of her room. "I don't really drink the stuff much, but my gir—uh, _friend_ —got us these matching teacups?" She grinned wide, baring almost every single one of her needlepoint teeth. "Started drinking more lately. Plus Asgore gave me a box of his special stash so now I really don't have an excuse not to."

"You don't like tea, but you drink it anyway?"

"Sometimes you do things you wouldn't normally do, for friends." She became pensive, then, staring into the steam of her mug. "Alphys—my friend—used to be really good pals with Sans when he lived in Hotland. Then, one day, he just packed up and left. Quit his job, broke his lease, hardly said a word to anyone. Alphys was … wrecked. The way she told it to me, he was her only real friend and he just left her there to rot without so much as a goodbye. Bastard didn't talk to her for _years._ "

You gaped, taken aback. That didn't sound like Sans …

"Imagining him stepping in to protect someone, _taking a spear to the side_ for someone … I wouldn't have been able to picture it before today."

A spear in the side?

"So let me ask you something," Undyne said through a steep, harsh frown. _"_ Are you manipulating him? _Is it your fault he's such a wreck?"  
_

* * *

Sans felt as if the bridge had been cut out from under him. His hands shook. His eyes darkened. Did the atmosphere lose density, or had he just forgotten to breathe? He grabbed for his chest as a piece of his soul tore off and dusted away within the hollow of his tattered ribcage.

When he'd overcome the raw pain coursing through his life essence, he eyed Goner Kid with giant sockets, as if to take in every inch of her. What _was_ she? Did she say she … didn't exist? But that would be a paradox. Could she be another person lost to the rift, then? Forgotten by everyone, just like …

"Oh, but … do you remember him?" asked the grey monster. "He worries you've forgotten, says you don't talk about him like he does you."

"no, that's not …" Sans interrupted, near tears. "hell, i can't stop recollectin' for just about everyone else."

Goner Kid smiled only a little.

Sans fumbled to resurrect his phone, determined to get a good read on this mysterious grey being if it fucking killed him. He desperately closed Alphy's small string of unread messages and restarted his home-made application. The placeholder icon jumped up and down, up and down, up and down …

"I'll be sure to tell him," said Goner Kid.

The monochrome monster's unnatural voice faded as she spoke, and by the time Sans looked up, she was gone.

* * *

As your eyes filled with saltwater, Undyne's shoulders became set in stone.

"What … what are you doing?" she asked, unprepared. She grimaced. "D-Don't be such a weenie …"

You hid behind your still burning hot mug of tea. "It's my fault," you blubbered. " _It's all my fault._ "

You honestly believed it. You were the reason he tried to kill himself, you thought. You were the reason he was so tired, so broken, such a shadow of his former self. During the resets, when he hadn't understood the logic behind your actions, he had given you the benefit of the doubt _a hundred times_ over. And now, when the tables had turned and he'd gone against your wishes _just once_ … you had done the opposite. You sobbed into your mug.

"Seriously," said Undyne, narrowing her yellow eye at the wall. "Am I the only one around here with some goddamn self-respect? Pull yourself together!"

You only continued to cry. Your mind was cluttered with images of his dust, his empty eyes, the way he'd looked at you just outside the door … Stars, your head hurt …

As another minute passed, you felt a stiff, awkward, scaly arm around your shoulder.

"There, uh, there," Undyne grumbled. "Punk."

The weirdness of it certainly helped your tears to dry. You looked up into her face.

"If you're that worked up about it," the fish monster relented, "I take it back. I don't think you're mind-controlling anyone. A wimp of a soul like yours isn't strong enough. Heck, I bet it wouldn't even be strong enough to break the barrier!"

That wasn't really reassuring to hear right now, but you smiled anyway.

"Don't waste your time sniveling about that guy, anyway," said Undyne with a new frown. She took back her seat. "Jerk's not worth your time."

"He's not a jerk …"

 _"After what he did?"_ She slammed her fists down onto the table. "Alphys doesn't deserve that. She deserves a _real_ friend, someone who will be there for her, someone who will tell her how _GREAT SHE REALLY IS …_ and … stuff."

You eyed her a little conspicuously. "So … why don't _you_ tell her?"

"Uh … ! Well, I, uh …" Color rose in Undyne's face, highlighting the edges of her scales with a red fringe. Slowly, her expression hardened with more and more resolve. "Yeah. Yeah! YEAH! _You're right!_ It's already written out, all I have to do is deliver _…"_ She flinched, and her confidence vanished just as quickly.

A teasing smile grew slowly across your face. "Are you _nervous_?"

 _"No,"_ Undyne snipped. She crossed her arms and her legs, and her unguarded eye darted away from you. "Hotland just sucks."

As you considered your next words very carefully, you cautiously tested the temperature of your tea again. Your already burnt tongue really wished you hadn't.

"I could deliver it for you …" you said.

"Whoa, really?" Undyne whipped around as if you had just invented the light bulb and set it off above her head. She beamed. "I should've thought of that!"

You smiled a little nervously, because in all honesty, _Papyrus_ should havebeen the one to suggest it … just not at this time. It was frightening to diverge so far from the usual path, you thought. _But the usual path doesn't exist_. _It's just like any other day, now._

Undyne disappeared into her bedroom for a few long minutes, and when she returned, she slammed an envelope down in front of you. The power of the impact was enough to reduce the entire table into a pile of wood. You grabbed your mug off the table just in time.

"If you read it," she said, inches from your face, "I'll KILL YOU." _  
_

* * *

Sans all but collapsed into a sitting position on the damp wooden planks of that creaky old bridge. He wrapped his arms around himself loosely, stared as if transfixed into the untied laces of his off-brand Converse high tops. The image began to swim.

He was _alive._

Sans hardly noticed the rivers of tears streaking down his face. If it were true, if that grey specter weren't just a figment of his tired imagination, was this news better … or worse? What horrible state was his brother in now?

Sans didn't know if he sat there for hours or minutes. Question after question surfaced with fewer and fewer answers. What should he do? Was there anything _to_ do? If only he had managed to scan that grey child, maybe he'd have something to work with. Readings of the surrounding area only delivered the same ambiguous information he found in the hallway leading to the crystallized cheese: all right, but not all right. Such inconsistencies were difficult to diagnose.

The scent of smoke trailed over to him through the long caves of Waterfall. If the house were on fire, your date must be over. He thought for sure he had wandered farther than to catch wind of it, but he supposed not. He was awfully tired, after all, and his legs were short.

Wiping his face with one sleeve, he reminded himself he couldn't linger on the past like this, not when someone else relied on him in the present. But … should you rely on him? Even though he'd found a little rest in Undyne's care, it had only been one hour to the twenty or so he'd left unclaimed. The thought of closing his eyes filled him with horrible dread, irrational fear that if he left the waking world for a second it would be stripped out from under him, spooled back until all these days had been undone yet again. In his current state, he was nothing more than a liability to you. He dropped his face into his hands. What good is a broken shield?

He climbed to his feet nevertheless and followed the smell of smoke back the way he'd come. In that private nook of a small cave, he found what he expected: a sad looking fish house engulfed in flames. The fire hissed and flared about, chewing the building down into scale stones and ashes.

You stood alone just outside, watching the raging inferno, your mind elsewhere. Sans eased his way to your side. Together, you observed in silence, feeling the warmth breathe like a demon into your faces.

"yer head still hurtin'?" he murmured.

You nodded.

You expected that to be it until you felt his fingers glide across your scalp through the mess of your dark brown hair. His touch dismantled your well, brick by brick, until the water fell freely over. You hid your tears behind your hands. He shouldn't be so kind to you, you thought. You didn't deserve it.

"i mean, it's not bad thinkin'," said Sans in a sly attempt to cheer you up, "but … pretty sure it'll take more than a few drops to put out this bonfire."

Though the joke managed to pull a small laugh from you, it ultimately didn't help much.

After waiting another minute with no change, he ushered you into his arms and tucked you under his chin.

You hated yourself for not resisting. You hated that you were the one being consoled, that here he was, victim offering his shoulder to the offender. Yet here you stayed, allowing yourself in that moment to be nothing more than the human child, not the angel of the underground, not the pacifist savior, not even "Frisk." You fed your hand through the hole in his coat to his bandaged rib cage, and he didn't fight you.

"I'm sorry … "

"chin up, kiddo," he said gently. "we still got a ways to go."

 _We._ Your heart lightened at the word, and your eyes began to dry. As hard as you might have tried, you realized, you hadn't actually succeeded in pushing him away.

The house was on fire, and you left it to burn behind you.

You walked together past Blook Family Farm, down through the luminant marsh to the bank beside the ferry. As you waited for the Riverperson to show, as they always did, Sans checked his phone for scan data and messages.

A text from Papyrus asked if everything went well. Sans answered that "everything went, but mostly the house, up in flames,'" to which he didn't receive an immediate response. Below that, the notification marker pointed to his conversation with Alphys, which he'd forgotten until then. He dragged their text history to the forefront of his messaging app.

 _ **Alphys** (3:42 PM): "u know u can talk to me, right?"  
 **Sans** (3:45 PM): "yeah. same goes for you, alph."  
 **Alphys** (3:45 PM): "thx. we should hang out"  
 **Alphys** (3:45 PM): "u know, like before"_

Sans' eyes extinguished into darkness as if the soul had been sucked out of him.

 _ **Alphys** (3:47 PM): "when dings was here"_

* * *

 ** _NOTES_**

 _Oh my._

 _Boy, did this chapter change a bunch while writing it. A lot of stuff ended up getting pushed to the next chapter, but it's much better for it, trust me._

 _On the plus side, since most of it's already written,_ hopefully _Chapter 8 will be ready to go sooner than usual. I'm going to aim for the 1st, so we can catch up and get back to the 1st/15th update schedule. (Fingers crossed, though. It might end up taking longer than I think.)_

 _Hope you enjoyed! If you have thoughts or feelings, I love hearing them._

 _ **Next Up!**_ _Not everyone finds it that easy to forget._


	8. Remember

"Tra-la-la," sang the River Person. "What's my name … ? It doesn't really matter …"

The dog ferry chauffeured you to Hotland at lightning speed. Its paws tread the river like a wild animal, splashing water into the body of the vessel until a lake had formed around your ankles. Its violent takeoff threw you and Sans to the back of the boat without warning. You tripped over each other to your seats and laughed it off as an ordinary thing.

"one hell of a dog-paddle, huh, kiddo," said Sans.

As the turbulence normalized to a steady sway, the two of you became lost in the purl of rushing waves. Glimpses of uninhabited cave systems flashed by, where waterfall mixed with lava in great clouds of steam you could almost taste. The scent of molten rock soon accumulated on the wind with such potency you could smell nothing else, though several miles still lay ahead before arriving in the bowels of the Underground.

Past the bow of the gondola, Sans watched the scenery slowly transform from cool, damp rock into dry, volcanic earth. His thoughts had wandered away to sift through his memories like the long-neglected boxes of a dust-thick attic. After all these years, he thought he had left that horrible day behind him, but just like the cool air of Waterfall now distancing itself, it had only waited at his heels.

On the off-chance his mind wasn't playing tricks on him, dissolving in a family curse that frightened him more than any other, Wingdings was certainly alive—or at least, some _part_ of him was. Sans possessed a very diminutive frame of reference for the hellscape limbo of an existence that had swallowed his brother. Whatever the case, wherever he'd ended up, Dings couldn't be faring well. He had been … _suffering_ , the last time he'd seen him.

Days before the accident, he remembered, Sans had come to the lab early just like any other morning. He walked through the door, flipped on the lights, and rode the brand new elevator down to the main area purely through muscle memory. He could almost hear the electricity humming through the walls now, feel it vibrate through his feet like a distant earthquake.

He wore the uniform of a white lab coat that, to be honest, could have used a wash two weeks prior. He got a good whiff of himself and flinched. When consulting on a gig as intensive as the Paradox Project, there was hardly time for laundry, let alone a full night's sleep.

After navigating a maze of hallways, he opened a large, red door at the very end, where he was greeted with the overwhelming aroma of metal and magic.

In the true lab of 19XX, organized chaos reigned supreme. Machines, wires, test chambers, drawing boards, grid paper, and all manner of tools lay scattered across the workroom with no clear pattern. In the center of that messy, tiled floor stood their latest version of the temporal flux manipulator, or the "time-turner" as Sans put it more simply, what they hoped would undo the barrier's timeline with the simple flip of a switch.

After escorting Papyrus to community playschool, Sans was usually among the first to arrive. He took it upon himself to brew the team a pot of coffee so strong there was barely enough water to call it fluid. Functionality over flavor, he thought. He spotted his brother's back over the brim of his favorite mug, poring over a mess of papers and blueprints across the room. He pulled another cup from the cabinet.

Wingdings Gaster stood several heads taller than his older brother, albeit heads shorter than the skyscraper his younger brother, Papyrus, would inevitably become. Like most skeletons, his slender frame stretched thin and lanky, face split with a smile wide enough to mock the gods. Sans always thought Wingdings had been blessed with the best looks between them, but Sans had the unfortunate habit of selling himself _short_. It certainly helped that Dings was a smart dresser, even if his shirts lost the tie or a few buttons by the end of the day. But more striking than anything was the way his grin twisted like a jester's at a good joke, a smile Sans lived to see—though he'd encountered fewer with every day.

Wingdings' free-flying shirttail and rolled up sleeves were enough to tell him he'd been here all night.

Papyrus had been a late bloomer, even for someone descended from a family known for impressively long lifespans. He should have hit his final growth spurt fifty years prior, but it wasn't uncommon for young monsters to develop more slowly when the magic nurturing bonds of both parents had been severed prematurely. This meant he was still too young to care for himself, which meant someone had to keep watch of him after school. That someone was _definitely_ not Dings. The royal scientist needed silence to concentrate, and as much as he loved his little brother, the volume module on that tiny ball of energy never switched any lower than eighty-five decibels. So while Sans brought his work home, Wingdings stayed here, slaving over science well into the night.

"they say sleep's a solid substitute for coffee," said Sans with an edgewise grin, handing his brother that steaming, ceramic mug of caffeinated tar.

Wingdings snickered and took it without removing his eyes from the tabletop. "But I need the beans for my bean, or I get depresso," he said.

Sans smiled, albeit a little sadly.

He had begun to worry for his brother. Certainly, he understood the caveats of managing a project, that while having its benefits, overseeing everyone else's activities hardly left time in the day to be individually productive. After devoting so much time and energy to his work, however, Dings had begun muttering to himself, thinking out loud more often, cracking borderline nonsensical jokes—humor that had once abounded in a wit Sans could only envy. Sans tried to keep positive, attributed it to stress and sleep deprivation, but certain tells suggested … something different.

Sans swept his eyes over the many papers without really reading them. "anything good?"

"I think …" said Wingdings in that voice so utterly unique to him. A smile crept across his face. "I think I might be a genius."

"ya got cert for that lyin' around here somewhere," Sans teased. "did ya solve the breaker issue?"

"Oh, _that?_ No, not _that_. _That's_ old news. Forget _that._ I fixed _that_ a minute after you left!" Wingdings excitedly rifled through a few stacks of papers and snatched out a couple sheets, sending the remaining pile scattering like leaves to the floor. "Look. Here. There. This. Plus those. And … _that."_

"oh," said Sans, eyes widening at the pages now in his hands. "oh! oh, ding dang, dings!"

Wingdings snorted. "Was hoping for a full 'damn,' but …"

"i mean it needs counterbalance; the quantum fluctuations of …"

"… Sector four? Covered. See if we reroute the magic input through the twin module, it won't interfere with …"

As Wingdings rambled on about temporal fluctuations, improved designs, and the blueprints he planned to draw up for them, Sans became transfixed with something else altogether. For the first time that morning, he'd caught a glimpse of his face. Cracks twisted away from his eyes, one especially harsh ravine running high on his right, another low on his left. Only a powerful amount of force could have cracked a skull to that extent.

"If the redesign works like I think …"

"dings."

"… and the calculations are correct—which, they _are_ …"

"dings."

"… then it should be ready to test before …"

 _"dings!"_

 _"What?"_ Wingdings smacked his hands flat to the desk exasperatedly.

Sans took cautious hold of his brother's upper arm and leaned in for a better look. Wingdings finally caught on. He shied away and frowned down into his blueprints.

"the hell did ya do to your _face?_ " Sans asked.

"Nothing."

"bullshit it's nothing. we should call a _doctor_ or …"

At the sheer mention of medical help, Wingdings yanked his arm away. His eyes hollowed out and the room went dark, just long enough to make his point. Sans understood the implications. His magic manifested in a similar way when trying to seem dangerous, like a peacock flaring its feathers into a million eyes. He wasn't intimidated, however, and Wingdings knew he wouldn't be. So when the air cleared and everything became visible again, Dings only covered his face with both hands. More than anything, he seemed scared.

"It's nothing," he said. "It was an accident. It's fine. I didn't mean to. It was just so loud … and my head was so _full_ …"

Sans stared at him for a few horrified seconds that felt like hours. "dings …"

"Just forget about it."

"you know i can't."

Wingdings started laughing, then, quietly at first, until it evolved into something strained and broken. Sans took half a step back, face darkening as he recognized a worrisome pattern he'd seen once before, only not in his brother.

"So what are you going to do, then?" asked Wingdings, lowering his hands to reveal an utter lack of humor. "Pin me down in blue and drag me off?"

"that isn't …"

"I'm not _him."_

"i know," said Sans calmly, raising both hands in a goodwill gesture. "i know you're not. listen, if ya don't wanna go to the doctor, that's fine, but … how 'bout … you let me fix it."

The younger of the two curled a little into himself, but didn't answer.

"you know i'm a good healer," said Sans, reclaiming the step he'd sacrificed before. "if we don' touch it, it could _stay_ like that …"

"No," said Dings abruptly. "No, I-I _need_ it to …"

The pain and fear in Sans' heart continued to grow. "you … _need_ … a crack in your skull?"

"I …" Wingdings took a second to process this. _"I said forget it,"_ he snapped.

His shoulders fell instantly when presented with the look of distress on Sans' face. He turned back to his work, but left it untouched. They remained silent for what felt like minutes on end.

Just as Sans thought it might be safe to move closer, Dings spoke up again.

"Why don't," he said quietly, "why don't you take the day off …"

Sans notched his eyebrows in disbelief. "kiddin' me? pretty sure _i'm_ not the one who needs t …"

"Please. I just … I need space."

* * *

As you watched Sans stare off past the bow of the ferry, you wondered just what kept his mind from the present. He'd become so pensive since mentioning the grey door in Waterfall, even more since your run-in with Undyne. At first, you had thought unrest to be the culprit, but now you reconsidered.

You knew if you asked him outright what he was thinking, he'd never answer. Especially now, after the incident on the bridge, after you'd all but told him you didn't care what he thought, you wouldn't be surprised if he had decided to keep you on a need-to-know basis. Maybe if you opened up to him first, you thought, he might return the favor. After all … you had some secrets too.

You bit your lip and clung tightly to your own hands, garnering strength for the words you hoped to speak. Your arms shook with the intensity of your small grip.

"If I tell you a secret," you said, "will you tell me one too?"

Sans turned back to you as if stolen from another time. His heavy, dim eyes investigated you like a sleuth in search of clues, but he only found your worry, your nervousness. He could tell that, whatever you wanted to say, it was something you had been pining to get off your chest for years. His expression became one you only now realized you had missed, the one that had taken you under his wing and cared for you when you knew nowhere else to go. He sighed and hooked his arm over the gunwale like the back of a chair.

"sure, why not," he said with a shrug.

You sidled a little closer to him, if only a fraction of an inch, and gathered your nerve a moment longer. Putting it off only worsened your anxiety, and as soon as that became clear, you forced open your mouth.

"My name isn't Frisk," you said.

Sans stared stiffly for what could have been a minute. His silence crawled under your skin, petrifying your flesh as if his gaze cast you to stone. You wouldn't dare look at him.

"uh …" he began finally, and scratched the side of his head perplexedly with one finger. "well, heck, kiddo, what do i call ya, then?"

It eased your heart to hear softness in the deep vibrations of his voice, albeit a confused gentleness. It wasn't enough to bring your eyes away from the wet baseboards at your feet.

"I actually … don't know my name," you admitted. Despite all your fear, just to say the words aloud lifted a weight off your shoulders. "I think maybe I hit my head when I fell or something. It's weird because it's the only thing I don't remember. I guess it's not a big deal when I think about it like that. It's just a name, right?"

You met his gaze, then. You didn't know what to make of the expression you found there, as if he struggled to hide a bleeding pain in his heart.

"That's why I never introduced myself," you went on. "After I broke the barrier, 'Frisk' just … felt right."

Sans held his tongue from expressing the endless concerns encircling his head. Memory loss, coupled with the onset of persistent headaches, had his soul in a fire of fear. Were he on the surface he would have teleported you to a hospital for an emergency PET, MRI, CT, EMG, every brain scan he could ask for until he knew without a shadow of a doubt you were safe. Maybe forgetting your name _wasn't_ a big deal, since you had done just fine for years, but knowing that couldn't convince him.

Without much choice, he settled for his hand on your head instead.

"thanks for telling me," he said quietly.

It was a relief to know he didn't hate you, and you were grateful he had the sensitivity not to push you for more information, which you didn't have anyway. You leaned into the comfort of his touch, even if it was fleeting.

"Now you tell me one," you said.

"hm?"

"A secret."

"oh. heh … right." He looked nervously away, but only a moment before his smile flickered back. "okay, come 'ere."

When you shifted only slightly, he gestured for you to bend farther. He hid his mouth behind one hand and brought it within an inch of your ear.

"y'know how, when humans die, they turn into skeletons?" he whispered.

You eyed him askance.

"well, when skeletons die … we turn into _humans_."

 _"No, you don't_ ," you laughed, and shoved him playfully aside.

He all but collapsed against the stern of the boat, chuckling from a place deep inside him. You smiled ear to ear. It had been too long since hearing such raw joy in his voice, or a laugh that could rattle his bones.

"For real," you said. "Tell me a secret."

"okay, okay. lemme think."

He bit at his knuckle bone. This had been a big one for you, he thought. The only fair response was to return in kind, and any less would be something of a betrayal. Though plenty of other secrets might have sufficed, there was only one he could think about right now. His smile slowly fell.

"i had another brother," he said reluctantly. "younger, 'tween me and pap."

Your eyes widened, even further when you processed the past tense of that statement.

"he was my best friend." Sans' posture withered the more he dwelled on the statement. "when he went away, it was like … i did too, y'know? not really sure if i ever came back."

You clung to the wooden plank of a seat beneath you. The words sank in, stewed, and cycled your head a moment before allowing a response.

"I'm sorry," you decided to say. It was _all_ you could say.

"'s all right," he said with the corner of a false smile. "was a long time ago."

As grateful as you were to glimpse more of the real skeleton behind his mask, what you saw only gouged the beating heart from your chest. No wonder he clung to Papyrus like he did, you thought, if he'd lost a younger brother before him. A loss like this was as a bottomless hole, and no words could possibly fill it. But in the very least, you concluded, you could be here for him.

You slid your hand into his and held on tight.

* * *

The blistering heat of Hotland's rocky floors burned right through your shoes. For the first time in more than a hundred timelines, you gave in to the weather and peeled off your sweatshirt before it could live up to its name. As you tied it around your waist, however, you looked down at your shirt. You'd forgotten that time-worn graphic, the words "good for muffin" in a circle around said blueberry quick bread. You grimaced, unable to decide if you were amused or not.

While you increased your pace to Alphys' lab, Sans slowly fell behind. The facility ahead felt to loom over him like the crest of a tsunami. He'd always gone out of his way to avoid the place. Everything inside, everything _no longer_ inside, only flooded him with an uncomfortable mixture of unwanted memories and unbridled panic.

He debated falling back and letting you proceed alone, but … no. As useless as he thought he was to you, he couldn't let you walk into the unknown so unprotected. Time here fluctuated with enough instability to vibrate his phone like a crazed hummingbird in his pocket. Besides … he wanted a word with Alphys.

He paused only meters away from the entrance. These doors. After leaving Wingdings alone like he'd asked, he had exited through the very same. Though he had followed the path toward their small, fifth story apartment in the capital, he had changed course midway.

He remembered it as clearly as if he walked there now. In the place where MTT Resort eventually stood spread a simple courtyard, not much to look at beyond a few benches and the steady flow of elevators across Hotland's many layers. Sans had stood uncertainly before two elevators, what would later become one after the robot's grandiose renovations. Home, or _New_ Home, he debated. He tentatively reached for the button on the right. After what he'd just witnessed, his anxious soul wouldn't allow him to stand idly by.

On Asgore's sad grey welcome mat, Sans fidgeted uneasily, fist at the ready to knock … but ultimately he lost the nerve. He dropped his hand slowly. What exactly did he plan to do? Ask him to call off the project? Fat chance.

Sans knew as well as anyone just how deeply the King had buried his nose into this mess. The loss of his entire family still bled like a new wound. Who in that situation _wouldn't_ want the power to undo time?

He shook his head. He'd find another way.

Only a few steps from the door, he paused to hear it unlatch.

"Well, howdy, Sans!"

He sighed, wished with all his heart he could just teleport away with the kind of magic only found in fairytales. He turned back to the grey stone edifice unwillingly.

In the opening stood a towering beast of a monster in royal wardrobe. His horns curled back from his head high enough to catch the lintel, which they did, audibly. His mane compensated for the shorter, coarser fur of his body in long, brilliant gold. He seemed overjoyed, as if starved for any visitor at all.

When Asgore offered him a seat, Sans discovered he was too nervous to accept. Some primal instinct for self-preservation told him to keep on his feet, no matter how disarmingly the king of all monsters sat in his plush armchair by a crackling fireplace. Sans messed with the edges of his lab coat uneasily.

"i'm worried," he said, finally, "'bout dings."

Asgore folded his hands in his lap. He looked at him intently, wordlessly begging him to continue.

"he hasn't been _himself_ , lately." Sans winced at the inadequate wording. "hardly sleepin', hardly eating … i think, maybe, it'd be good if he had a break. if we could just push pause on the project for a few ticks …"

"Hmm," said Asgore thoughtfully. "Well, what does _he_ think about all this? Have you spoken with him?"

Sans frowned.

"I see," Asgore murmured.

For a moment, Sans said nothing. "y'know it … runs in my family t …" As soon as the words left his mouth, Sans' eye lights flitted away into darkness. "i think," he forced himself to continue, struggling to mask the quiver in his voice, "if the old man hadn't been under as much stress, maybe it wouldn've … ended … the way it did."

"Maybe so." Asgore mulled these words over with an increasingly somber expression. He searched Sans intently as if reading a tragedy in fine print. "You showed incredible strength of character, stepping in for your brothers like you did."

Sans grimaced. Strength of character? That was hardly correct phrasing.

"i can't let it happen to him … too," said Sans. He closed his eyes. He didn't want to be here. He didn't want to be talking about this. "i can't stand around and watch him fall apart, but i … i need … your help."

Sans waited stiffly for any response at all, and soon found it with the weight of a heavy, heavy paw on his small shoulder. His eyes kept to the silver woodgrain in the floor.

"I understand," said Asgore. "I'll do what I can."

* * *

"Sans?"

He became suddenly aware of hands holding his face, and the quick, skipping way he brought the air inside his chest. When he tore his eyes away from the lab, he found you standing just before him, staring up into his countenance as if he'd just reappeared from the netherworld. How long had he been staring at the front of the building, dazed and unresponsive? By the way his soul shuddered in his chest, he could tell he was in the very early stages of a panic attack. He dragged your hands away from his cheeks and sheepishly lowered them.

"sorry," he said.

"You don't have to go in." You glanced between him and the lab uncertainly. "I can handle this alone …"

"too risky," he said, shaking his head. "rift's prob'ly about under us, now."

You reflexively looked down between your feet as if you'd be able to see it.

"better to stick together. not sure what the damage is yet—uh."

His eyes fell to the graphic on your shirt. Once you realized he'd found it, you felt your cheeks burning with more heat than the dose of oven air Hotland had breathed onto you. Your mouth stretched in a thin line, just as a small, teasing smile slowly found its way onto his face. He tittered.

"guess i'm not entirely t'blame for your awful sense of humor …"

"You know full well you are."

Though you didn't completely understand what he meant by "the damage," the phrasing sounded far from good. You anchored yourself to his side as you took slow, careful steps toward the front door. At a foot away, the entrance slid open automatically.

The brilliance of Hotland fought against the darkness inside that room. For Sans, it was as looking into his bedroom closet in the dead of night, heart wondering if it went deeper than his mind already knew it didn't. Sans took a few more heavy, controlled breaths, and you squeezed his shoulder supportively. When he looked at you his pinprick pupils filled out just enough to confirm that your reassurances had helped, even if only a little.

You walked inside together, and the door slid shut behind you.

* * *

 _NOTES_

 _A wild Wingdings appears! You use brotherly love. (It was not very effective.)_

 _I almost made it to the 1st, but the 2nd is close enough, right? Hopefully this means I'll be able to keep up with the 1st/15th schedule from here on out._

 _Sorry that this is mostly flashback, but I hope it was still interesting. I know a lot of you were eager to see Gaster, and this chapter is definitely where he starts leaning into the story more._

 _Are you enjoying the fic? Want to see art, fan art, and other updates? Consider following on Tumblr ( riftfic)!_

 _Thanks for reading!_

 _ **Next Up!** Let's hear what Alphys has to say._


	9. A Good Person

"yo, alph," Sans called hesitantly. "you here?"

The dark of Alphys' lab overwhelmed you, as if the door had not only severed the blinding brightness of Hotland but snuffed even the most distant stars. Only the hum of machines and spinning escalators granted you a rough framework of your surroundings. A dim square of light flickered from the surveillance display nearby, and past that, yet another shined from what you could only assume was Alphys' computer monitor. Without your preexisting knowledge of the interior, what lay ahead would have been completely unknown to you.

You remembered your first visit to the lab, how afraid you had been. Now, the darkness didn't bother you. All that really mattered was that welcome blast of air conditioning, soothing your skin with ice-cold relief.

You felt Sans tense at your side, heard his breath quicken just a fraction. You doubted Alphys could have heard his call for her, even if she were standing just across the room. Though he had always been soft-spoken, his quiet cello of a voice had yet to return to what you considered normal speaking volume since that final reset. His words were hardly more than a distant rustle of leaves.

Before you could say anything, he hummed anxiously and flipped on the light switch to his left.

The lab was overcome with an almost clinical fluorescence. You blinked, not only to combat the sudden change in lighting but in surprise he knew exactly where to find the switch. In more than a hundred visits to the lab, you had never once thought to search for the lights yourself.

The two of you looked dead ahead, where you found Alphys, caught almost quite literally in the headlights.

She sat frozen, curled like a cat in her computer chair, dressed in pink flower-pattern pajamas. Across her head hooked an ordinary over-the-ear set of headphones, personally refurbished with plastic cat ears and nylon whiskers. A string of ramen noodles hung out her mouth, stretched in yellow coils from the chopsticks at her lips to the styrofoam cup in her hand. Chicken flavor. The broth dribbled unfortunately down her shirt.

Her reflexes caught up to her all at once and she lurched back in place with an audible squeak. Her computer chair slipped out from under her. She dropped to her tail. The force of it yanked her headphones from the jack, and with it her audio defaulted to the external speakers on full blast.

 _"But, Masuka-chan,"_ said a passionate male voice, _"my kitsune form does not allow me to love. I fear like this we are destined to part. I can no longer remember the feelings that stirred my bosom so …"_

 _"No, please,"_ said a female voice, _"allow me but one chance to remind you, senpai …"_

Alphys scrambled for the mouse and clicked furiously through a series of Mettaton pop-up ads until the audio disappeared. She took a moment to steady herself, then smiled at you sheepishly. Her face steamed with more heat than the lava pits outside.

At this point, Sans was already wheezing with laughter against the wall, forehead to the mint green paint. You smiled at Alphys sympathetically.

"O-o-oh my god!" said the dinosaur monster, as if recognizing the pair of you all at once. She glanced around frantically and swatted away the lingering ramen noodles running down her shirt. "Oh, n-no, the place is a wreck, I'm not even d-d-dressed … !"

"neither are those two in a minute, the way things are goin'," Sans snickered.

Alphys spun to face her monitor and all but barfed up the ghost then and there. Though muted, the video still played, displaying two extremely anime figures intertwining in the throes of passion. She panicked and unplugged her monitor altogether.

"You could've t-texted," she grumbled sulkily, slumped in defeat over her desk.

"yeah, guess i shoulda." Sans' smile diminished. "y'know i'm not much for it."

He and Alphys exchanged a meaningful glance, though you failed to interpret anything further. She didn't linger long before turning specifically to you.

"S-s-sorry," she said. "I'm Alphys, Asgore's r-r-royal scientist."

"y'mean _spy_ -entist."

You elbowed Sans sharply in the ribs. He flinched and hissed an expletive under his breath.

Alphys' face burned again, just a little. "O-oh right, the cameras. Well." She looked at the giant surveillance monitor on the nearest wall, which displayed the group of you standing together on periwinkle blue tiles. "I guess it's n-no secret I've been watching you. F-f-f-for research!" She granted you a wobbly smile.

Her stutter. The sound of it always twisted your insides. In that future lost behind you, Alphys had nearly overcome it with years of effort, therapy, and friendly support. It could never escape your mind that she would have to start all over again … assuming you even succeeded.

"I lost track of you after Sans b-broke the bridge in Waterfall," said Alphys. "U-Undyne said she handled it but I d-d-didn't know how to interpret that, you know?"

Sans closed his heavy eyes resignedly. Just as he had suspected, Alphys knew almost everything.

"But I'm glad you're s-s-safe!" said Alphys. She approached you timidly. "I thought for sure Undyne was going to k-k-k-k- _kill_ you!"

You smiled and shook your head. Then, after a moment's hesitation, you slipped your hand into your back pocket. Your fingers locked around a paper rectangle. Your heart hammered.

"She wanted me to give you this," you said, and proffered the envelope.

Sans raised an eyebrow.

"R-really?" Alphys took the letter from you cautiously. A bit of color returned to her face and she picked eagerly at the seams, only to frown when it refused to budge. "Huh. It's c-closed pretty tight. Hold on."

She almost tripped in her hurry to the escalator and rode it upstairs. Even if your comfort zone had been far more than breached, you couldn't help smiling.

"heh … how about that," said Sans.

When you turned to face him, you found such a fond look on his face for you, your heart swelled without your given permission.

"guess you do listen, sometimes," he said.

All fear of the outcome, all anxiety toward taking a new path through the Underground, all vanished in the wake of his smile.

"Just sometimes," you said.

He ruffled your hair just a little, enough to push your bangs into your eyes, and walked past you toward the moving stairs. You started to follow him, but the sudden shriek of power tools redacted your decision. You winced and held your still pounding head between your hands. No … you'd stay down here for now.

Sans slowed to a halt.

"still bad?" he murmured.

You nodded. Bad was, in truth, an understatement. If anything, it was worse.

"hang here for a minute, kiddo," he said. "be back for ya in a sec."

Sans stepped out onto the next metal stair and let the escalator sweep him away.

You took a deep breath and looked for a seat. You reached down to lift Alphys' chair back onto its legs, but stopped dead only halfway there. Had you blinked, or … had the chair disappeared? You stared into empty ceramic tiles with nothing but your shadow staring back. When you turned to your right, there the chair stood, completely undisturbed as if Alphys hadn't bowled it over in the first place. Your eyes fixated on its simple pleather folds as if they were possessed.

The persistent scream of violent machinery upstairs told you that, no, time hadn't slipped backward for you as it had so many times before. As far as you knew, that power still lay beyond reach. Your hand felt for the back of the chair and, the moment you'd garnered enough faith, you sat slowly. Your seat didn't give way, didn't vanish.

You pressed hard into your temples with your bare knuckles and tried to reason with yourself. Had you lifted it to its feet already and just forgotten? Was your mind slipping away from you because of this god-awful headache? You lowered your face into your hands. Perhaps forgetting your name was only the start of something you had reason to worry about.

* * *

At the top of the stairs, Sans surveyed Alphys' room curiously. The last time he'd visited this place, it had been nothing more than an old storage and meeting room. It was surreal to see it adorned in so much … _pastel_. His eyes traveled from the bookcases to the Mew Mew Kissy Cutie poster to the fold-up-cube bed in the corner. His still panicked heart softened to see just how different it was, almost as if convincing him he stood in a different room altogether.

His grin stretched wider than a half moon to see Alphys with a chainsaw at her work table, trying and failing to rev it into action. The letter lay flat and vulnerable. With every electric sputter, it quivered as if in fear.

Sans chuckled. Alphys turned to him as if he'd just crawled out from the depths of her laboratory and begged for dog food.

"tellin' me ya ain't got a pair of scissors in this blade factory?" he asked. He pushed the bandsaw hanging on the wall into a pendulum swing as a point.

"Y-you've obviously never seen a letter from Und-dyne before," Alphys said with a sideways smile.

Sans stopped the tool flat against the wall and delivered a deservedly puzzled expression. "she's … sent you a letter before?" he asked.

"Uh." Alphys cut her next attempt at starting the chainsaw involuntarily short. Her brow furrowed with confusion. "Well, I … _f-feel_ like she has," she said thoughtfully. "Can't remember when, though."

On her next try, she managed to start the chainsaw, but even that failed to tear the seal. Pieces of metal flew away from the band in sparks, and by the time she decided to pull the machine away, it had been wrecked by the strength of the envelope. She tried a drill next, then a table saw, then a blowtorch. All had little effect. At this point, Sans stepped in and summoned a small dragon skull with a flash of blue and yellow in his left eye. The magical manifestation opened its jaws and focused a small ray of energy like a laser precisely through the edge of the paper. It cut clean open.

"Th-thanks," said Alphys.

As the skull vanished, Sans' eyes darkened wearily. "alph," he said, "can i get your ear a minute?"

Her hands paused halfway to the letter. She adjusted her glasses and looked at him askance with a nervous smile. "Wh-what for?"

He frowned, and her eyes darted guiltily away. He sighed and massaged the bridge between his closed eye sockets.

"i don't get it," he said. "why didn't ya tell me sooner? hell if i wasn't convinced … i was the only one who remembered him."

"I wasn't k-keeping anything from you, if that's what you mean," said Alphys quickly. "It h-happened so suddenly, out of nowhere. Earlier this week, when I was downstairs in the lab, I felt displaced and then … I remembered. Just like that."

Sans mulled this over. The timing, the "displacement" as she put it … both coincided perfectly with your last reset. Had she remembered at the start of every reset before and simply said nothing? Had it been a recent development? This only contributed more evidence to his hypothesis: that many resets had only served to widen the rift.

Sans discreetly pulled out his phone and pretended to check something as he scanned her. The results suggested some temporal instability, but no more than he or you had initially displayed. In whatever way the rift might have affected the two of you, it had affected Alphys as well.

"did you remember … anything else?" he asked quietly.

"I-I-I don't know," said Alphys, a little flustered. "I'm m-more curious how I forgot in the first place … although, I can guess." She closed her eyes, covered her face with one hand. "God. The project. It backfired, didn't it? I w-wasn't there, so I didn't see it, but …"

At this point, you had deemed it safe to venture up the escalator, but the tone of their voices halted you at the corner. Your back flattened to the wall. Though you hated to eavesdrop, you wanted less to interrupt, and there was no way you were going to try your hand at running down an up escalator.

"we fucked up bad," said Sans. "'cause of the experiment, time isn't what it should be and i'm worried it's gettin' worse. have you noticed anything weird? anything you thought was … strange or not what you thought it would be?"

"S … sometimes," she said slowly. "Mostly down in the lab. Things will either be g-gone or just … somewhere entirely different than where I left them before. I just thought I was being s-scatterbrained, but n-n-now you have me worried."

Though your fears deepened in another way, part of you still sighed in relief. So it wasn't in your head that the chair had moved. But that hardly mattered when considering the alternate explanation. Time was … getting worse? What did that mean? What did it mean for the Underground? And just how much more information was Sans keeping from you?

"God, Wingdings …" Alphys' hand slipped away from her eyes. "That's it, isn't it? The reason you left."

"alph." Sans' eye sockets emptied. "i know … it was shitty of me. i had tunnel vision, all i could think about was dings and …"

"D-Don't apologize."

"i shoulda said more than _nothin'_. we were … pretty close."

"Yeah …"

Sans shuffled his feet.

"I always figured," she said, " _s-s-something_ happened, even if I didn't remember. I spent y-years thinking about it but I could never put my finger on why. So I figured it was probably just … something I did."

He kept silent. His soul weakened with guilt, and part of it felt to slip away from him. His chest hurt with a dull ache where the piece had been lost, and he struggled to keep himself from showing it. Knowing her as well as he did, understanding her anxieties and the struggles she faced every day, he had still decided to leave her behind with no answers. He was so selfish.

The room felt to darken around him, but he tumbled back to reality when her arms wrapped around him.

"S-s-stop it," said Alphys. "Wh-whatever you're thinking, stop."

"but …"

"Your brother _d-d-died_. You're allowed to deal with that however you want."

Sans simply stood there, drowning in a million thoughts.

"what if … " he said finally, "what if he's still down there … ?"

Alphys tore away from him. " _Wh-what?_ "

You almost rounded the corner.

His mind circled back to every doubt, every worry that maybe—just maybe—he had imagined all of it. He'd gone so long without sleep. It wouldn't surprise him in the least if he'd begun to unravel.

"heh. nothin', forget about it," he backpedaled uneasily. "just the denial talking." He pointed to the letter and grinned. "you gonna read that or am i gonna have to?"

Alphys hesitated a moment, and then reached for the sheet of paper. She unfolded it between her hands.

You focused all your energy into keeping your heart from racing. You hadn't put two and two together, not until then. The experiment that broke time and his brother's death … they were intertwined, weren't they? No wonder he didn't want to come here. No wonder he feared the rift. Everything made so much more sense, from his protectiveness of you to his change in attitude after you'd mentioned the grey door in waterfall. Did he think you saw … _him?_ He'd never actually said his brother had died, only that he'd been lost … Stars, what must be going through his head right now?

Bursting with questions as you were, it was still a conversation for another time. You counted to ten and untied the sweater around your waist. As you rounded the corner, you began slipping it back over your head—the picture of nonchalance.

"oh, hey, bud," said Sans.

You waved through a dangling sleeve.

"was about to go get y …"

"O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh m-my wh-wh- _what?"_ Alphys interrupted. The page hid all but her eyes, which peered over at you with alarm. "Y-y-y-y-y-you said _Undyne_ wrote this? You're k-k-k-kidding, r-right?"

You beamed like a tricky sliver of early hour sunlight. You shook your head.

Alphys blushed so furiously it was a wonder the letter didn't catch on fire. "I d-d-didn't know she wrote so _p-p-p-passionately!"_

Sans snickered.

"So what does it say?" you asked innocently.

"Sh-she … she-she-she … _likes_ me? I m-mean I'm paraphrasing b-b-but I think … she wants to _go out?"_

You and Sans did your best to act surprised.

"whaaaat," he said.

"No way," you said.

"Wh-wh-what do I do?"

"Well," you began, "what do you _want_ to do?"

Whatever thoughts Alphys surfaced burned her face so hot it practically melted. She mumbled something under her breath.

"I want to go out with her," she said finally. "But I don't know where to start … g-g-god, I think I'm gonna puke …"

You looked to Sans. Despite his apparent weariness, the lights of his eyes shined bright with amusement. They darted toward Alphys encouragingly. You reached out and touched her arm.

"If you let me," you said, "maybe I could help."

* * *

Sans couldn't bring himself to stay there anymore, and so he left you with Alphys to undertake the monumental task of preparing her for her date. He took a walk alone through the burning wastes of Hotland instead, down a path he'd traveled so many times it hardly took thought. The overpowering aroma of carcinogens were nostalgic of the Underground's early days, when this place had been nothing more than a danger to be avoided, a wasteland of fire only elementals braved for anything less than a childish dare. How long had it taken to construct that powerful device swimming in the distance? If lifespans were the same for monsters as humans, the project might have stolen the golden years of his brother's youth.

He paused at the edge of the path, overlooking this great machine that would then after be referred to as "the Core." He remembered when Wingdings had first formulated the idea to harness lava into energy for the Underground. Fallen pages from above, transcripts detailing how humans had traded their knowledge of fire magic for the more potent lightning, sparked his genius even before adulthood. Harnessing the magic of the earth itself, wasting no monster's energy for simple needs, was the pinnacle of resourcefulness.

Sans, already submerged body and soul in the study of quantum physics, had done everything he could to encourage him. He remembered how he would help Dings salvage components from the dump, how they would dissect electronics and read old texts that fell down from the human world above. Following Wingdings' design, he had helped him assemble a successful prototype for the Core, the final rendition of which his brother presented to the royal family. It was amazing to think what had begun as a coping mechanism for their father's death would reward the entire Underground so profoundly.

After the invention's successful implementation, Asgore had repaid him with a permanent position as royal scientist, a title that had never existed before then. On that same night, as they celebrated the device's final installment, Sans nevertheless found him far away from the party, looking on his creation with empty eyes. He stood just about where Sans did now, he realized.

"somethin' sinkin' your ship, bro?" Sans had asked him, having joined him at his side.

Wingdings sighed a little more audibly than was necessary. Sans looked up into his face, his brow unconvinced.

"I know I should be happy, but …" Dings leaned on the banister as if deeply troubled. "I mean I know it's such a little thing and it really shouldn't bother me as much as it does; it doesn't really make a difference; words are just words …"

"it's the name isn't it?"

 _"Yes, god,"_ Dings burst, eyes practically rolling to the back of his head. "I mean, _royal scientist?_ Couldn't have hired a _royal name maker_ first?"

"'i'd have turned him down on principle."

Wingdings sputtered with a laugh that could only be described as contagious. As their humor mellowed, however, his eye lights swept back to the Core a little dimmer than before.

"It's not a fix," he said quietly.

"'s not the point, is it?" said Sans with a sideways smile. "think about how many people this is gonna help, or how much easier life's gonna be from here on out."

"But here on out is …" He frowned. "It's like I installed an indoor pool on a falling satellite, or painted a bottle rocket gold, or … or put gyftmas lights on a tree, but that tree's on its way to the incinerator. It doesn't matter if the whole thing's going up in flames anyway." He gestured to the distant core. "Behold my magnum opus: 'band-aid on broken bone.'"

Sans took a moment to consider what he said, but not long before Dings planted an exuberant hand on his shoulder.

 _"Ugh, wow,_ those were good metaphors. So fucking good. You all are just … so blessed to have me, y'know? Once in a lifetime monster prodigy here. God, was I on fire. Have they announced my nomination yet?"

"the ballots are in and it looks like winner for 'most on fire' goes to …" He pretended to open a letter and read it. "grillby."

"Fucking Grillby."

Sans giggled.

"Looking at the math, though," Wingdings continued, "with or without the Core, we're due to run out of resources in just a few centuries. Our only real chance of survival is to find a way out."

Sans looked on to their brand new power source. The creativity, innovation, and sheer intelligence it took to manufacture were nothing short of genius.

"then you'll just have to figure that out too."

Wingdings smiled warmly, and Sans did too. He had every hope for the future, when standing at his brother's side.

Sans stared at the ceiling now as he did then. He wondered how things might have changed if everything had played out differently, even if minutely. Would they have found their way out in the first timeline, if not for the rift in time? Would he have his brother? And if he had his brother … would he have you?

As monsters walked past him in a steady blur of warmth and color, he caught wind of something that didn't quite belong. Its presence overcame his senses like a foul odor, only it could not be described with any of the five senses. It was simply … wrong. He turned his head, and his bones chilled as if thrown into frozen oceans.

Among the usual crowd walked someone entirely out of place, entirely in grey. He walked together with a group of Hotland civilians into one of the elevators at the far end of the rock pathway. They piled in, and the doors began to close.

Sans only stared at first, stunned to his wits' end. The moment he gathered his senses, however, he teleported outside the machine and rushed forward. Inside, no one seemed to notice the out-of-place man in grey. In turn, the man in grey did not seem to notice Sans as the silver metal doors slid shut in his face, locking him out. Sans cursed and tapped at the button desperately, but the following thrum of electricity signaled its escape.

Sans' mind raced, his soul shook. With its innovative design, the elevator could have gone anywhere: left, right, up down. There was no way he could check every port on foot, at least not in time. Just teleporting that short distance had been difficult for him, not only because of his current state, but … space had simply resisted him. His attempts to fold it had been labored, as if there were multiple pages stacked onto one origami sheet. He chose not to question it and steeled his resolve.

He dropped in and out of reality at every doorway until, just when he thought another teleport might rip him apart, he found the monster in grey. He landed on his feet, felt his soul split with another hairline fracture. Though his insides were on fire, he hurried after the anomaly, cutting a line in dry earth to run as fast as he did. As the stranger turned a corner into a secluded off-shoot of the platform, however, the labor of what Sans was doing finally caught up to him. He gasped for breath, felt the sweat slip down his back. No, he thought. He _had_ to reach him. He _had_ to know more. As he neared the grey man, his outline became blurry, and soon Sans' mind spiraled away from him against his will. His eye sockets darkened into black caves, and the ground reached up to catch him.

* * *

After giving Alphys your undying support to call Undyne and set up their date, you roleplayed the outing to her heart's content. The practice might have merited from a little more seriousness, probably could have done without the exaggeration on your part, but in the very least you had fun. As Alphys lay out her black and white polka dot dress across the smooth, flat surface of her cube bed, however, she became very quiet. You had been spinning circles on the swivel stool by her work table when you noticed, and threw your feet to the ground in a dizzy halt.

"What's wrong?" you asked, although you could guess.

"I-I don't know if I can do this …"

"Don't you like her?"

"I d-do! It's just that she's … so far out of my league." Alphys' shoulders started sinking. "So cool, and c-confident, and funny … and I'm just a nobody."

"Alphys …"

"E-everything she knows about me is a l-l-lie. If she likes me, it's because I pretended to be way c-cooler than I really am. And if she saw the real me … I bet she'd change her mind."

You stood straight and battled the lingering swim in your head from one too many revolutions on the spinning chair. It faded quickly. You filled your lungs with a preparatory breath and channeled the energy of the one and only Papyrus as you dropped a hand on her shoulder. You filled your eyes with stars.

"You're not nobody, Alphys!" you said. "Undyne wrote that letter for _you,_ because you _are_ cool! And smart! And passionate about the things you like! And the best part is I didn't even say all that; _she_ did! I bet Undyne doesn't even care about the other stuff. I bet whatever it is, if you told her the truth, she'd understand."

"Th-the _truth?"_ Her face blanched as if Endogeny had just appeared unprompted over your shoulder. "B-but what if she doesn't like me anymore? What if … what if she …?" She melted with resignation. "No … you're right. I should own up to my mistakes. Even if she hates me. Even if she realizes I'm a l-l-lo …"

"… Lovely person?" you filled in, before she could get the chance.

Alphys didn't seem so sure of that, but she smiled. "Th-thanks," she said. "You know … when I saw that Sans was helping you, I d-didn't get it at first, but now I think I do. You don't d-deserve to have your soul taken. You're a good person."

For the first time in a long time, that statement felt wrong to you. After taking away everyone's happy ending, after all but destroying Sans through countless resets, did you really deserve to be called "good?" Would saving everyone all over again be enough to forgive you?

You realized Alphys had pressed something into your hand. Your fingers uncoiled in reveal of a quad-colored rectangle: a master key card to the true lab.

"I'm _not_ … a good person," said Alphys, looking somberly away. "If you use the elevator downstairs—th-the bathroom—you'll see for yourself. I'd understand if you didn't want to be friends anymore, after knowing what's down there."

You stared at the key a long moment and, after some deliberation, extended it back to her. "I don't need to."

The dinosaur monster stood frozen as if you'd just poured liquid nitrogen down her back. "Wh-wh-wh-what do you mean?"

"The truth is … I'm not a good person either," you said. "I've done some things I regret. I've hurt people. But I'm trying to fix it. I think … that's the real reason why Sans is here with me. When you own up to your mistakes and do the right thing, your friends will be there to help you. Right?"

Alphys stared at you a long time, as if you were something of an otherworldly being.

"So it doesn't matter to me what's down there," you said. "All you have to do is promise you'll do what you can to make it right. Me, and Undyne, and Sans, _everyone_ … we'll be here for you."

Alphys smiled and her glasses filled just slightly with tears. "Okay," she sniffled.

As you offered the key again, she shook her head and pressed it back into your hands.

"K-keep it. Who knows? You might need it later."

* * *

Before Sans even lifted his head, he was already convinced he'd lost him. Even though his mind felt as if he'd blinked a second, his body told him it had been much longer. The man had probably vanished by now. He pressed his forehead into the ground and cursed himself.

"He was right; you do like to sleep," said a voice, familiar in the sensation it should not exist.

Sans opened his eyes to find himself exactly where he'd fallen, staring into a pair of very gray leather business shoes. He followed the pleated pant leg up into a chillingly hollow face, empty save for the sickly wide smile that stretched across it now.

He stood shakily and eyed the monster from head to toe. Judging by that awful grin, he didn't care one bit. Had he been standing there, watching him this whole time? How long had he been lying there? Suspicious, that no one had found him.

This time, he was ready. He had his phone out in a few seconds, scanning, reading this person from head to toe. What he glimpsed on the screen defied all explanation, but he would look at it later. He pocketed it and faced the man who was, alarmingly, a little closer to him than before.

"You're shorter than I expected," said the grey one.

"heh … 's what ya get for keepin' your hopes up," said Sans uncertainly.

"I suppose if you're a skeleton, you have to be his brother … even if you're not much to look at."

Sans narrowed his eyes. He already liked Goner Kid better.

"He wants to see you," said the stranger.

Sans blinked. "what?"

"Oh, dear. Are you losing sight of me? Or are you just deaf."

"watch it," Sans snipped. "what do you mean, he wants to see me? _how?_ wh … where do i even go?"

"Where's the first place you look, when you've lost something?"

Sans' eye sockets hollowed out entirely.

The grey monster laughed in a way most suitable for his wide mouth. "Don't make him wait, now," he said.

Sans' head became an unpleasant field of static, and the man was gone.

* * *

 ** _Notes_**

 _Shew! That one took a lot out of me. Sorry it's late! Hoping to get ahead soon, since I'll be on vacation in a week, but we'll see about that._

 _Enjoying the fic? Consider following on Tumblr ( riftfic)! There, you'll be able to ask questions, see progress updates, as well as chapter illustrations and fan art._

 _ **Next Up!** Dating, Start! AKA Will Sans accept the invitation?_


	10. Grey Ghosts

Dark room. Cold room. Sterile room but for the dirt enshrining his feet—no, _entombing_ his feet. A small space he couldn't leave, like a box, or a bowl, wrapped around his ankles as an earthy shackle. He dropped his arms to touch, but no fingers extended to dust the brim of his cage. His arms were wide. His arms were flat. He wriggled his toes, found them longer and more numerous than expected. Should he have expected something else? Though these moments could have been his first, some instinct called him a continuation, a late passage of the book, though all previous chapters had been ripped out behind him. He had just been born and yet this couldn't have been the first time.

He swung a head much larger and heavier than the rest of him, slowly, as if the atmosphere stewed in old honey. The quiet, electric hum inside the walls jabbed like a knife through his head. The faint lighting blinded his unpracticed eyes. They lingered closed a moment longer before taking in a room that meant very little to him, especially when blurred with nearsightedness.

A wall of mirrored glass showed him a hard-to-read reflection. From this far away, only splotches of gold, green, and white refracted his motions. He leaned forward and slid off a ledge he hadn't noticed.

The cacophony of shattering clay struck through the room like a crash of thunder. The long, numerous ends of his feet could now breathe—though they weren't particularly happy about that. The fall tenderized his appendages, his face, his torso, but not enough to impede him. The mirrors stood straight ahead. He crawled toward his reflection.

A wreath of gold around a white center. Green spades for arms reached out to touch the glass. The word "flower" came to mind. Something told him flowers shouldn't be able to move like he did, see how he did, think like he did. He supposed he was more flower-ish. Flowery. Flowey. Yeah, he liked that last one.

This face … he could shape it into any form he wanted. So why was every countenance he surfaced a stranger? Before all this, what kind of face did he own? Did he even have one?

Footsteps and a closing door echoed down the hall.

Panic stirred somewhere deep inside him. He was in danger. Someone was trying to kill him, many someones, though he couldn't remember who or why. His roots clawed against the tiles as he clambered off through the nearest doorway, down into the cracks of the earth, away through dirt and drywall. He scraped and smacked against the innards of the lab blindly, desperate to escape a set of teeth and claws he didn't even remember. At long last, he slipped out of his self-drawn maze into open air.

There was no floor to catch him. He fell down, down, down … down toward a brilliant light and sharp impact that should have broken him, but only forced him back to sleep.

* * *

Sans returned to the lab just in time to help you escort Alphys to her date, though you wondered if that were actually his intention. You had found him downstairs, thoughtful, shaking, staring at the elevator to the true lab as if it were the gateway to gehenna. As soon as he caught you looking, however, he did a hell of a job hiding it.

His play-acting didn't work on you. While it might have escaped Alphys, he had become even quieter than before, succinct with words and slow with actions. A weight more than weariness pinned down his already heavy eyes, though their pupils searched the path you traveled more sharply than ever. Deep inside your red soul, you knew something was wrong. You only wished he would tell you.

Since the dinosaur scientist had never called upon Mettaton to act as your enemy, her fabulous robot friend had done nothing to disrupt the elevators or rearrange the Core. For the first time, you found it possible to take the lift out of Hotland, down into the bustling streets of New Home. The quaking walls of that metal box hadn't given you this many chills since first ascending to face Asgore.

Entering the city was as walking into a silver Byzantine in its prime. A hundred arches led your way down the brick-laid path among domes and spires so spectacularly high they grazed the ceiling. Although grey stone overwhelmed the architecture, a surprising overgrowth of colorful fungi and greenery found their way through every nook and cranny. The unique aroma of fire-cooking, music and pleasant chatter overwhelmed your senses at every turn. You had been robbed of truly witnessing the Underground until then, you thought, when no other region had felt nearly this _alive._

Seeing the capital in all its glory, you could fully appreciate how many monsters had been trapped in the Underground—and how quickly they were running out of space. The streets were packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people of every shape, size, even state of matter. You caught glimpses of ghosts, mammalian monsters, sea monsters, dinosaurs, elementals, hundreds upon hundreds you'd seen before—and no skeletons. That didn't keep Sans from serving as excellent camouflage. With his bones and Alphys' scales flanking you on either side, you went entirely unnoticed.

Your first glimpse of New Home left you starved. You soon left the busy streets to seek out Alchemy, a casual but hard-to-reserve hangout spot in a more discreet corner of the capital. Alphys had mentioned in passing that both Undyne's position and relationship with Asgore had pulled a few strings.

The quietude here amid fireflies and warm magical lanterns sang with an aura of peace and exclusivity. The building itself had been erected over a lily-heavy stream of water, visible through a glass floor—though neither you nor Sans got to see that far. All you were given enough grace to behold was the simple but refined exterior of sparkling quartz. There outside the doors, Undyne waited anxiously, dressed in her nicest casual wear of leather jacket, jeans, and calf-high boots.

If Undyne were nervous, Alphys was drowning in a sea of panic. As soon as her eyes met her date, her entire body went beet red and quivered like the earth's deepest tremors. She fidgeted with the folds of her black and white polka dot dress, bunching the fabric in and out of her fists. Her front teeth grappled her bottom lip as if to hold on for dear life.

You found her arm reassuringly and, soon enough, she stopped shaking.

When Alphys finally found the nerve to go join her, your heart raced on her behalf. You couldn't hear what they said, but their bodies swayed, eager and yet fighting to disguise it. Alphys looked to you for one last burst of encouragement. You threw her two thumbs up just as she vanished from sight beyond the entryway.

You and Sans lingered on the path outside, staring at the empty space where they once stood. Your smile remained rooted, though your arms had fallen to your sides.

Sans planted his hands in his pockets and looked at you askance.

"we're spyin' on 'em, right?"

"Absolutely," you said.

The two of you traced Alchemy's edge, peeking through windows until you found the pair again. When you caught them, they had approached a polished granite bar. Undyne was in the act of lifting a crimson-faced Alphys onto a high-sitting stool, while she herself remained standing. Alphys almost toppled straight off as her heart came close to stopping.

Smooth, calming music trailed to where you'd concealed yourself in a tangle of vines outside the window. Though their words still escaped you, just observing their body language was pleasant enough. You quickly became lost in the subtleties of their every movement.

Sans' thoughts, on the other hand, wandered elsewhere. All evening, that grey man's words and empty face had haunted him like a bad dream. If not for the scan he'd taken earlier, he might have brushed it off as just that—but the results were there and all the proof he needed. This stranger, whoever or whatever he was, had indeed come from the rift. The temporal instability surrounding the apparition more than delivered a paradoxical reading. It overloaded the graph with an inconsistency the likes of which threw many of his theories, hypotheses, and calculations on the fire.

He watched your beaming face. The dangers of nearing the rift were too great to ignore. Time could unwind a person's very fabric of existence. Chapters of their life could be removed or rewritten. They could be displaced, erased, or driven mad. In the face of the unimaginable, the possibilities were endless. If he went to the rift, he couldn't let you join him … and yet he worried about leaving you here alone.

 _as if you're much use to the kid, anyway,_ he thought.

You noticed his distant eyes, his gaze lost in the ivy leaves and wood molding along the windowsill. Asking him what was wrong never worked. Even when on the surface, when laughter pervaded through your every waking minute, asking Sans for information came with a fifty-fifty chance of being trolled. Now, rather than messing with you, he said nothing at all.

At that moment, you realized Alphys must be confessing her dishonesty to Undyne. It was easy to sense by the quiver of her shoulders and the tuck of her head. In the end, the sea monster seemed to understand and reached out to comfort her. Seeing it now, your heart ached with kindred guilt, a desire to be forgiven, and a need to be heard. You bit your lip.

"Remember when I first broke the barrier," you chose to say, "and the world was completely different from what I remembered?"

Sans eyed you suddenly as if you'd just called him out from the netherworld.

"And," you continued, "you told me how time moves more slowly down here than up there?"

Sans nodded slowly. "a theory, yeah. picked up on as much once ol' newspapers started washin' down. whatcha gettin' at?"

You hesitated. Your grip on the windowsill tightened. The crease between your eyebrows deepened. "What if the reason is, when I reset, it doesn't reset the whole world?" you asked. "What if it's just the Underground, and we all just fell behind?"

Sans flinched. He hadn't considered that.

"What if, when we get out, everything's different again? What if, to them, monsters were there one day, then gone the next? What will I do? What will I tell everyone?

"relax, kiddo. i was pickin' up on the time difference long before we ripped the clock a new one. that means years before you, and years before that flower." When his response clearly did little for your nerves, he sighed. "say you're right anyway. we'll deal with it if it happens. no use worrying about it now, 'kay?"

"What if we don't even make it that far? What if we don't break the barrier?" You clutched the windowsill as if it were the only thing keeping your head above water. "I'm so scared … all of this will be for nothing."

Sans opened his mouth but, for a pain in his heart, he couldn't say it wasn't.

Hearing it out loud only deepened your fears. What if this whole journey ended as a mistake? What if everything you had done only caused harm? What if …

"What if I can't save Asriel?" you whispered.

You waited longer than anticipated for a response. When you searched for feedback in the lines of his face, you found more thought, more sadness, more uncertainty than you had expected.

"sometimes you can't save everyone," he said.

The words, though quiet, rumbled from his very core like an earthquake. You could feel their tremors in your own soul, and through no volition of your own, your breath halted as molten lava turned obsidian. Sans' dim lights for eyes traced along the green overgrowth creeping just by your faces, well past the forms of Alphys and Undyne afar.

"but you have to try," he hummed, almost as if to himself. "you have to do everything you possibly can or else … or else …" His voice descended to a whisper. "how will i live with myself?"

You saw him as if for the first time that day. He looked awful, worse than you'd seen since starting this journey. The shadows around his eyes had grown more intense. His hands shook in their pockets. If judging by looks alone, he was about one Jenga block away from crashing down.

"Sans …"

"shh-shh, hold up!" Sans hissed, eyes suddenly brighter than beacons.

You looked through the window just in time to see Alphys and Undyne leaning shyly close to one another. Your lungs stiffened, holding the air in your chest like a balloon, ready to lift you off your feet. You and Sans bent together at the opening, bridling with anticipation. Alphys and Undyne neared each other slowly, surely, and after a moment's hesitation, collided in a first kiss.

Sans' fingers jumped immediately into his mouth to whistle. You cheered.

"All right, Alphys!"

"mew mew kiss that cutie!"

Every monster inside Alchemy turned their heads to you as if you'd just set fire to the drapes. Alphys blushed. Undyne glared. The beginning sparks of a magic spear hovered under her hand. The two of you ducked and covered, snickering despite yourselves.

You decided to leave them alone after that and retreated down the network of alleyways that wove the tapestry of New Home. As you swam out into the denser lights of the city, Sans noticed how your head swiveled around to every feature like a hummingbird torn between a flower and a nectar pot. He smiled, perhaps a little guiltily.

"think maybe, while we're here … nah, never mind."

You stopped and spun to him on your heel, eyes dancing with artificial suns. If Sans had been hesitant until then, he gained confidence now. His grin became true.

"was thinkin' … how 'bout i give ya a quick look-around?" His hands spread wide under a coy shrug. "might not have another chance."

In the heart of New Home, you could truly experience the best of what the Underground's capital had to offer. Before entrusting the job to more experienced hands, your few months as an ambassador had given you the privilege of traveling to many beautiful human cities, but none compared to this. None had such an overabundance of _magic_.

Multicolor lights flickered everywhere, for entertainment, for business, for fun, for no reason other than to show off or make tasks easier. You joined in magic games with other children, tasted monster food you'd never encountered before, watched light shows on the cave ceiling above. . . . Despite the vicious throb of your head, your soul sang with excitement to see a world that would likely never be seen again. For one selfish moment, you failed to regret your decision of resetting time.

You hadn't seen Sans this cheerful in a long time, though it wasn't for the experience itself. His smile stemmed from the wonder in your eyes, your fingers pointing to the ordinary as if incredible. And yet, before long, his humor faded.

As the evening grew closer to night, he stopped suddenly to stare at the dark fifth-story windows of a square stone building. He didn't say anything about it, but you could see the thoughts churning behind his eyes, hidden in the dark of his skull.

After that, he led you away from the dying crowd, off into a quieter alleyway.

"so, uh …" said Sans quietly. "hate to cut the evenin' short but … there's somethin' i need to check on, and i need to go at it alone."

Around six red flags popped up in your head. "What kind of thing?"

"uh …" He glanced away to the left, toward the windows that had caught his attention. "family stuff. don't worry about it."

Your heart sank. "But … I thought I _was_ family."

A grimace tore across his tired face. "kid, you know that ain't what i meant."

"Then what's going on?"

Sans refused to give an answer, but you had a solid guess. All his words and actions, subtle or not, had been building to this moment. You had only been waiting.

"The rift."

By the way his posture bent and iced like a tree branch in a snowstorm, you knew you were right.

"It's where you're going, isn't it?" You stepped forward. "You told me before there's nothing down there. Was that a lie?"

"new data," he said quietly, "suggests it might be worth a peek …"

"Then I want to come with you."

"too dangerous. just stay up here and hang with your buddies. then if i ain't back …"

 _If he isn't back?_ Your fists had been tightening but now they clenched so hard they shook. "No," you said.

He heaved a sigh.

"If there's an answer to saving Asriel down there, I want to find it, and … I can't let you go alone."

The darkness of the alleyway, so separate from the city light only feet away, smothered you as if buried alive. Your eyes hadn't met once since starting this conversation. Whatever you said, Sans had already made his decision. Your heart hammered in your chest, just a degree shy of the steady drums in your head.

"I overheard you talking to Alphys," you said, as timidly as you could. "Your brother, the one you lost … he's the reason you want to check, isn't it? Because you think he might be down there. Do you honestly believe that? Do you really think, after this many years, you'd still find him there?"

Sans had already found it uncomfortable to breathe, but now it felt impossible. His emotions began to boil, his shoulders harden, his teeth set. "you don' know a thing about it."

"Then tell me! Is it because of what I said about the grey door in Waterfall? You know that's not proof of anything …"

"you're not the only one who's seen some grey ghosts."

You swallowed all words you might have planned. Your wild eyes implored him for more information.

He told you what he saw. The more and more he described the events and the circumstances surrounding them, the more worry filled your gut. Your mind raced. Everything he described, that the apparitions seemed invisible to everyone else, that they appeared only after what you'd said about the man in Waterfall … sounded an awful lot like a hallucination. You wanted to believe him, truly, but … that shiver running down his spine, those circles under his eyes. He wasn't well. You could see it at a glance. Who knew what concoctions his mind was stirring up for him after so little rest, after what you'd put him through?

"if he's there, and if he's as tuned into what's happening as i think," Sans said, "kid, he might have the answer you're looking for."

"Okay, but maybe," you said calmly, "maybe you should … sleep on it …"

Sans' heavy, tired eyes became sharp and alert as they jumped to your face. "the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"I-I just think that …"

"you don't believe me?" he said. The edges of his tone were growing sharper by the second.

"It's not that I don't _believe_ you; I'm just worried that what you _saw_ wasn't … what you think."

He frowned and pulled open the app on his phone. "here." He held it out to you. "i got the chance to run a scan on it."

"You know I can't understa …" You caught your tongue. You might not have the intellect to read the results like he could, but you couldn't mistake what he held out to you now. "Sans," you said calmly, uneasily, "there's nothing there."

Confused, he snatched the phone back into both hands. He flipped through the readings. Surely enough, his scan from this evening now showed absolutely nothing. No grey stranger, no graphs, not even that dark alleyway in Hotland.

His stomach dropped. His thoughts pirouetted. Perhaps, with time's increasing instability, his phone had reverted back to a previous state of being, one before taking the scan. What if the stranger himself had messed with it to leave no trace? Or maybe …

"Maybe we should go back," you said, "find a place to relax. MTT Resort, or … someplace here …"

He stood stiffly, staring at his screen, though his eyes looked well past that.

"I'm sure if you tried to get some sleep …" you began.

"like that'll do any good."

"I know you've been trying to hide it, but it's obvious you haven't slept in days!"

"and why do you think that is?" he snipped. "sure as hell ain't got nothing to do with you or the living hell you put me through. it's not as if i get nightmares every time i close my eyes, or … or that i'm constantly afraid the world'll spin back and leave me behind …"

"Sans," you breathed, eyes wide. "That won't happen. It _can't_ happen. I can't reset anymore!"

 _"i know,"_ he said. "did i call it fucking rational?"

A pocket of silence drowned you. You had petrified into a frozen statue of a human being. The more time you had to drink his words, the more your soul wrenched, the more hatred you garnered toward yourself. So this was it. This was how he really felt. You were right to think you'd broken him. You were right to think it was all your fault.

"let me have my way for once," he said, voice shaking. "believe in _me_ for once. 's all i want, kid."

You wanted to. You really did, but … "I can't just let you put yourself in danger."

"it's my only shot. to _save_ him. how's this any different from what you're doin'?"

"It's not the same," you said, and it was the wrong thing to say. "You're not thinking straight."

His eyes emptied. So many emotions crossed his face, you couldn't place them—but every single one broke your heart.

He nodded resignedly. He emptied himself of feeling, because all only worked to tear the cracks in his soul deeper than he might survive. He held on for a chance. He wouldn't let you stop him. You were both on your own, now.

"good luck, kid," he said.

And with that, he disappeared in a flurry of cyan.

* * *

The upper floors of the lab had darkened once again, save for the light of the surveillance monitor, which flickered on playback of a rather unassuming Waterfall offshoot. The display blinked once, then twice. A flash of cyan blue tasted the contours of the tiles and machinery, but only once before withering fast. From its epicenter tumbled Sans, flat to the ground like yesterday's laundry. He lingered there a second, his bones aching, tired, resisting him.

Once he had an honest grasp of his surroundings, he reached for the wall and pulled himself to his feet. His head spun, but he didn't fall. His soul seared with more damage than he'd felt since the last reset.

His ribs stung behind Undyne's bandages. Their magic had worn off, leaving the wound to repair on its own. He slid a hand inside his coat. From what he could feel, ripping out of space so haphazardly had undone a bit of the hard work.

He admitted that you were right, in a way; to have teleported this far when his magic suffered, he _certainly_ wasn't thinking straight. That didn't mean he regretted it. Taking that shortcut away from you was his only chance of pursuing this alone. After that little spat, he'd be lucky if you so much as blinked rather than keep your eyes on him.

As he stood there, catching his breath, he reopened the app on his phone. Still nothing. He couldn't have been hallucinating it, he thought. He couldn't believe that, not until he saw with his own eyes what stood below his feet.

Down past the elevator, Sans took that all-too-familiar path through the True Lab until confronted with a locked, multi-key door. He paused. This was new. Alphys must have installed it out of fear that her secrets would be discovered—not as if that prevented the amalgamates from escaping.

He sighed miserably and massaged his forehead. He supposed he had no choice. He envisioned the opposite side of this door, what he knew used to lie beyond, and gathered what magic he could to open a portal.

If his shortcuts had resisted him before, they all but denied him now. Though his font of magic ran low, this wasn't the problem—at least not all of it. What he had last interpreted as a fabric too thick to fold now told a different story. Space had become a substance too fluid, too wild and unstable to capture and manipulate. He focused and, with tremendous difficulty, eventually grasped the blanket corners to bend them inward, however slippery and wavering the fibers might have been. The portal opened its jaws and ate him alive.

* * *

You had been standing in a frozen panic for all of five minutes before your mind clicked into gear and reminded you to move your feet. You were walking. _Good._ Running. _Even better._ You sprinted down the cobbled streets of the capital, back the way you had come to the best your knowledge. You hoped you would find your way to Hotland quickly enough, if at all.

After a few wrong turns and some minor monster run-ins, you made it to Alphys' lab. Thankfully she had forgotten to lock the front door. You searched frantically for the light switch, and when you found it, no more information was granted you. If Sans had come here, he had left no traces. With his ability to teleport, he could be absolutely anywhere at all.

As your eyes lifted to the surveillance monitor, it dawned on you that you had the power to find him right in front of you. You went to the controls and, after a few minutes figuring out the knobs and switches, you were flipping through every camera in the Underground. At a cursory glance, Sans was nowhere to be seen.

You found the lab recording of where you stood now and rewound the footage until just before Sans disappeared. Surely enough, after a patch of static, there was Sans. Your liver ate itself to see him withered against the wall, laboring for strength and breath as if he'd just run a marathon on broken legs. You didn't need any more proof than this. You didn't need to watch him make his way to the elevator door. You had known all along this was where he headed.

This elevator ride, though the shortest of _all_ elevator rides, felt to take longer than all of them combined. You paced around the small square confines, your headache roaring to astronomical proportions. When you caught your reflection in the polished metal doors, however, your feet slowed to a halt. You stared into this face, one that you'd never felt truly at peace with, no matter how many times you reset. You reached out a hand to touch the cold steel. In light of everything you'd said and done … was it still you?

The doors slid back open before you could decide. You remembered your purpose here and ran out into the cold, dismal corridors of the true lab. You'd snooped through enough of the recording to know he had disappeared behind the four-key door, where the surveillance cameras did not go. You felt for the multicolor card in your pocket, the one Alphys had given you in thanks for your help. You took a deep breath and steadied it between your hands. You inserted it into the center module, and the door slid open.

* * *

 **NOTES**

AND SO IT BEGINS. Next chapter begins the climax and I am PUMPED. I haven't even started writing and my heart's racing.

Anyway, thank you for reading! If you have thoughts or feelings, I love hearing them.

 **Next Up!** Our heroes begin their descent.


	11. The Descent

Bright room. Silent room. Warm room save for the cold ceramic tiles on his face. Though beaten and bruised from his petals to his roots, the pain lasted only a moment before a gentle brush of life ran its fingers up his stem. By the time he moved, he had been healed, restored to the brand new flower creature he had glimpsed in the mirror before taking a dive into these depths.

He blinked open his eyes, only to be blinded again by a harsh, white, pulsating light. Lying as near to the brightness as he did, from it he could acutely taste an odd, contradictory sensation of pain and pleasure. It rippled through his every molecule until cast into a state of mind he couldn't comprehend, as if all days of his life happened simultaneously. New reflections danced endlessly away from him like facing mirrors. What they told him of his future he instantly forgot, but the past … that lingered.

He remembered, now, why his face looked so foreign to him. He understood why he had run so blindly from the sound of footsteps. In his last moments alive, he had been hunted. _In his last moments_ … With every new thought, a warm throb beat slowly, steadily stronger inside him: determination pooling in his core like an old friend.

The discomfort of standing so close to the brilliance quickly outweighed its euphoria. Just as the light had brought him to bloom, now it wanted him to wither. He crept away, back toward the walls of a lab he could barely see and out into the dark of the Underground.

* * *

Sans coughed and gasped awake. What was he thinking, teleporting again? Hadn't he learned from the last few shortcuts? Every fiber of his being shook under the strain of putting it through yet another jump. His soul, already in tatters, felt to be less than stitches now. He touched a hand to the spear wound in his side and found it fresh with dust. The bandages hung there uselessly, stripped away by the winds of the in-between.

He peeled them off. He didn't need them anymore. Finding his brother meant more to him than his own life. Even if his body resisted, he would carry onward, buoyed with so much hope and resolve he could be as determined as a full-blooded human. He flattened his hands to the cold laboratory floor beneath him and staggered to his feet.

* * *

The multicolored lock retracted the door in four quadrants. They slid back into the corners to reveal a short hallway and there, at its end, the final elevator. This pathway had always been eerie to you, but set to the sound of electricity already running, your hair now stood on end. You knew why. The moment the power generator became operational, Flowey always hijacked the lift and pulled you to New Home with no hope of going back. In every single timeline, this marked the point of no return. You wondered if that were still true.

On the floor just inside the hallway, a spiral of cloth stood out to you against the otherwise vacant tiles. Your hands dropped to lift the bandages, but they only fell again from your trembling fingers. You'd seen this kind of dust before. In fact, you'd hoped to _never_ see that sickeningly beautiful shimmer like powdered silver ever again. Among the particles, something red painted them thick, like … blood?

The gallop of your heart made itself known with every throb of your aching head. You took a breath and reassured yourself the bandages held far too little dust to mean anything. Still, your fears only deepened. You ran ahead.

The elevator doors were closed. Never once had you found the platform anywhere but here, waiting, as if by destiny prepared to take you upward. You smacked the button repeatedly. A few delayed clicks and one angry screech of metal later, you were amazed to hear the lift rising from _below_. Before now, you had never thought the elevator went anywhere but _up_.

When the entryway slid open, you discovered an entire sheet of metal ripped off the interior wall and cast to the floor. In its absence, a new button had been revealed. Below the switches for New Home and your current floor, "B1," a neglected "B2" rested among several heavy layers of rust and grime.

* * *

If the frigid air and ghostly green aura of Alphys' usual stomping grounds were unsettling enough, the hallways Sans braved now could have been spawned from his darkest nightmares. Flickering, unstable lights shed rays on cobwebs thick with dust and free particles hovering like timeless snowflakes. The buzz of electricity shorted in and out. Smells of must and molding paper coated the air. It wouldn't surprise Sans if a leak had sprung down here somewhere. What doors lined his path had been shut tight, so utterly dark through their tall slat windows it was impossible to know what lay inside unless already familiar with them.

Luckily—and unluckily—Sans knew this place like the back of his hand.

He took a breath. Simply being here, undertaking this fool's errand, diving headfirst back into a hell he'd hoped to leave behind, would have been enough to strain his already shattered soul. He closed his eyes, wrapped hope like a tourniquet around the edges of that pitiful spade. There had to be a light at the end of this tunnel. Just a few turns down the long hallways, through a big red door, and he'd find it.

His steps cut a line through the dark dust of the floor. His memory of this hallway felt fresh to him as if it _hadn't_ been ages since his last visit, as if he _hadn't_ done everything in his power to forget the lab and all inside. The farther in he walked, however, the longer this hallway felt to become. He turned the corner and yet he was right back where he started. Or at least … it _seemed_ he was.

This hallway looked different to him. One second it appeared younger than he remembered, then the next it seemed older. New doors became old doors, even no doors at all. The same cobwebs he saw earlier had been wiped clean—but in another blink of the inconstant lights, they padded the corners even heavier than before.

His phone vibrated so powerfully it could break. The universe buzzed his brain with confusion. His previous contact with the Rift had given him some immunity to temporal disturbances, but how long would it hold against the unraveled timelines swimming around him?

Muffled voices struck up conversation in a nearby room. Was there a light on under the door? Sans found it difficult to decide. A part of his mind said "yes," and yet another …

He slowly, cautiously reached for the door handle and pushed it inward—but found only the remnants of an abandoned chemistry lab. He had visited this room a handful of times before sealing the entire floor behind a spare elevator panel. By his recollection, he _should_ have already passed it. _It should have been the first door on his left._

More whispers reached out to him from down the hallway, and his soul surged with new hope. One voice sounded familiar, unique, isolated to the person he desperately sought to find here. He hurried back to find shifting shadows around the corner, flickering in and out of sight at the end of the corridor. He chased after them.

Running down the hall was as muscling against insanity incarnate. The farther he traveled, the worse it became. Time and realities flipped over him like the pages of a book. Voices echoed around the inconstant hallways, and soon he became unsure where their words were leading him, if anywhere at all.

The dialogue became more nonsensical, spilling over him from left, right, even sometimes above. He could no longer pinpoint a single direction, until the snippets of a familiar conversation reached out to him. In yet another chamber, he glimpsed two silhouettes: one tall, one short, both skeletal.

"It's what you wanted from the start, isn't it?"

"dings …"

"Am I wrong?"

"i just think that …"

Sans knew, then, that these voices he heard were only ghosts, stages in time blurring their lines. He turned away from the memory before it could go too far. His hand, already tight on his ribs, clenched their damaged bones a little further. The pain of it distracted him from pain of another kind. He pushed onward toward the other echoes beckoning him down the hall.

At long last, he reached a dead end. A large red door stood floor to ceiling on his left, mottled in age one moment, brand new the next. Here, he hesitated, phalanges flat to a surface so hauntingly carmen it could be painted with blood. It burned warm against his bones. Heat radiated through the metal like a hot stove, as if the heart of Hotland's lava pools rested on the other side.

What if he didn't find what he was looking for?

 _What if he did?_

His second thoughts became third thoughts, then fourth and fifth, but the echo of his brother's voice on the other side snuffed all doubts into smoke like a low-burning candle.

The door creaked and scratched against its hinges unwillingly. A wavering light blinded him at first, but as his eyes adjusted, a familiar sight spread itself before him.

If he hadn't been so well acquainted with the Paradox Project's epicenter, the chamber would be completely unrecognizable as anything other than a disaster area. Old lab equipment, machines, vials, outdated tech and their broken components, all lay scattered across a dusty, cracked floor. Wires dangled from the ceiling; diagrams and posters hung singed and torn from the walls, dancing in the kinetic air. Burn scars blackened the ceramic tiles, jagged like a predator's teeth, snarling in a ring away from a deep, central crater.

A white-hot slice of light pulsated just above the gauge in the floor. Pieces of metal, earth, and more scientific debris hung suspended in the atmosphere around it as if in orbit around a small planet, but its shape was far from spherical. Its slowly undulating form twisted away through the air in a harsh ravine, a rift that faded far off into the universe itself.

* * *

The farther you ventured down these terrifying, inconsistent hallways, the more lost you felt. Left became right. Up became down. Even so, you sensed you were moving closer, wherever it was you headed. If only Alphys' cameras saw this far, you might have felt at least a little more confident.

With every step, your head throbbed as if seized with earthquakes, ready to split under the fiery pressure building at its core. You pressed on anyway. Sans was hurt. He could be in even worse trouble than you'd imagined. It would be all your fault.

After what felt like hours, you turned a corner into a dead end and a blood red door on your left. Your instincts took you toward the doorway first, but before you could even touch the handle, you stopped.

Beside the door, the wall twisted and morphed with a painful radiance like strings of light on the ocean floor. As bright as this ribbon might have been, it only glowed residually, as if just beyond the wall hid something so brilliant it burned straight through raw matter. It astounded you how you could have passed such an overwhelming sight for the red door, even if fleetingly. Had it even _been_ there before? Whatever the case, the vision ran a shudder down your spine as if threatening to pull your every cell into an alternate version of itself. You shielded your eyes, and just beyond the glare, you caught sight of something. It spun in slow pirouette, hovering only an inch or so above the ground. It looked like a white, upside-down heart, a spade maybe …

A soul.

A _monster_ soul.

Your stomach threatened to tear itself to pieces. Could it be … no. No, it couldn't. It _just couldn't_ be Sans. You tripped over your own feet to reach it, though your head screamed in protest. On your knees, you reached out shaking hands to the spinning soul and, without a second thought, took it.

It hurt.

Just putting your hands on this tiny beacon burned through you like raw fire. The wall you'd once encountered inside your head shattered like glass. That misplaced soul faded away into the unusual light as if it had never truly been there, and your hands fell through to catch the ground. Your headache spiked in crescendo and then dispersed with a cloud of images in sepia.

You were more than familiar with the first image: falling down into the depths of the Underground in an attempt to cut short your existence. You expected your memory to darken here, the moment you landed among yellow flowers, when you'd hit your head and forgotten your name. This time, however, it continued past that.

Your eyes had only closed a moment and, when you reopened them, you saw Asriel. Not Flowey, but _Asriel,_ the _real_ Asriel, the small, shy little creature who only held your best interests at heart. You remembered how his white coat of fur had burned bright gold in a halo from the overhead light, like an angel. He bent a hand to you, asked if you were all right. And no, you weren't all right, but it definitely felt a little better to see such kindness—even if you had been convinced at that moment he was a figment of your imagination. After what you'd been through, day after day of hurtful words and harmful hands … .

You shuddered. That's right, you thought. You had forgotten the day leading up to your fall. Without that memory, your mind had pieced together the obvious, that you'd finally given in and stepped off the ledge to the underground after so many nights lying awake, picturing the act over and over and over again. But now you remembered it had been more than that. You hadn't just given in. You had finally lashed out; you had finally pushed back; and in doing so, you had revenged yourself on your abusers infinitely more than intended to—or rather, _finitely_ more.

You felt sick. You hadn't meant to hurt anyone … had you?

Asriel took you to his parents, who would replace the ones you'd forsaken. Your eyes filled with tears now to remember that, after so many years, you'd finally found the love and care you'd craved, even if you didn't deserve it. Humans, such flawed and terrible creatures, only capable of pain and destruction, could never treat you the way these tenderhearted monsters did.

After basking in the Dreemurrs' love more than a year, your guilt and self-hatred gnawed you down to a husk. Despite what humanity had done to them, despite years underground at human hands, they had loved and protected you, a human child, with all their hearts. It took thought, it took time, but eventually you had a plan to repay them. Undeserving human that you were, for all your terribleness there was still something you could give.

You could give your life to set them free.

You remembered your plan. You remembered how it'd all gone wrong, how Asriel had been too afraid and goodhearted to go through with it. You should have known his edges were too soft to harvest seven human souls, even if it meant the freedom of his entire race. You—miserable human you—were as sharp as a butcher's knife. You could do it. _You'd done it before._ But Asriel was the one in control.

Broken beyond repair, your and Asriel's new body had fallen to dust inside the barrier, and it was all your fault. You'd killed him. You'd killed your sweetheart of an adopted brother. You had thought you would make Asriel stronger, but only served to ruin him. He lost his soul, and it was all your fault. Your perfect family tore apart, and it was all your fault. A loving marriage ended, and it was all your fault.

 _It was all your fault._

In the present, your tears fell fast down your face. If you could find your way to the ledge again, you would. All of this horribleness, every bit of it, wouldn't have happened if it weren't for you. Some part of you must have known, to be so desperate to save Asriel. Now, all you wanted was one more chance to start over again, to undo every terrible thing you'd wrought on the Underground, but that power was gone now …

Before you could thank the stars for no more memories, they continued. You remembered waking again, a second time. You were small, contained, beating with determination like a heart inside a flower's crown of gold, here in this very lab. _Reborn._ The rift in time, the one that lay beyond this wall, had stretched before you and Asriel's new body. You had stared into the power of all time and space, and it had stared back. Your determination called out to it, strong enough to command the clock. As your newly reformed soul lingered close enough to touch the breach in time, you stole a bit of its power for yourself.

Though you had been revived, you didn't have control. No, Asriel had control, like before … and just like before, you were helpless to watch from inside. You spoke, but he didn't listen—or maybe he didn't hear. If he received anything from you, it was your anger, your frustration. You had taken powerful magic into your soul, and here he squandered it on petty fights and dull games. He yet again failed your new chance to do things right, over and over and over. He didn't care about that anymore. He didn't care about your plan. He wanted to have "fun," to play with you forever, but forever on the same day grows stale before long. The games became more apathetic and cruel. Recalling the image of your friends now, falling at your hands, seared like a brand on your soul. Their dust scattered to the wind, one after the other, after the other …

Your heart filled with sound of their screaming, and nothing you knew of could silence it.

In the last shred of your memory, Flowey had learned of your grave—and upon visiting, you saw something unbelievable. At the mouth of the Ruins below the barrier, your body rising from its grave, jaundiced and slow but otherwise alive. You didn't think twice, or maybe you had no choice. You jumped home from Flowey and took the power of determination with you. But in the space between, you lost yourself—or maybe you'd chosen to leave it behind. You yourself reset to the person you were before becoming scarred, before you'd fought back against your human father and won. You forgot all this journey, all the damage that had made you who you were, even your own name. But now … now you knew.

 _Your name was Chara.  
_

* * *

If Sans focused his eyes hard enough, he could see faint ghosts of his past selves. Their blurred lines clung to a customary path, often straight through the door to linger at a desk or counter space or the old chalkboard in the corner. His stomach sickened to see the ghosts of others as well: the golden blur of Alphys, the blues, reds, and greens of other team members, but more upsetting than any, a taller shape whose ivory paths seemed to fade in and out of existence altogether. He reached out to touch them, but his hand fell through what were only memories.

He turned his gaze to the brilliance of the rift, but his eyes didn't want to see it. His every molecule resisted the phenomenon as if it shouldn't be there, and by all rights, it shouldn't have been. This monstrosity stood as a testament to his own shortcomings, to science gone too far, to emotions run too high. If the grey monsters he encountered exuded a bitter taste, the rift emanated denatonium benzoate unaltered.

Despite instinct and past experience screaming that he step away, Sans chose to inch forward. He walked as near to the brightness as he could before his mind threatened to abandon him. His soul shuddered with fear, with anticipation, with every doubt and hope he had suppressed until this moment.

"dings?" he could only whisper.

For a long time, or what could have been no time at all inside this abomination, Sans waited for an answer. Everything around him continued to change, rolling like the tumblers of a combination lock in search of the proper pattern, but in that way it remained the same. The world didn't change in the way he wanted.

"i'm here, like … like you asked," he tried again … but again to no answer.

He waited even longer, but the more time he spent here, the more his doubts began to overwhelm him. Hope chimed in with excuses. Maybe he hadn't waited long enough. Maybe he was missing a piece of the puzzle. Maybe returning to the rift wasn't even what the grey ghost meant.

Or maybe …

The dim lights of his eyes dragged through the glaze of past versions into the current state of this broken test room. Here lay all evidence to the terrible truth. Here, he and his brother's team had cut a gash in the fabric of time, and time had cut back. Here was the last place he'd seen Wingdings. _The last place._

Hope's binding around his soul loosened, and its deepest cracks only deepened. What was he even doing here? It had been more than a century. In a hundred years, he should have moved on. He was a scientist, for fuck's sake. All evidence before him—his lack of sleep, his family history, unusual visions and their magically vanished proof—he should have seen past the emotion and admitted to the most obvious answer.

He was cracking.

He covered his face with his free hand, the other still preoccupied with his dusting ribs. What a fool he'd made of himself, succumbing to his demons. Could he even return to you now, the failure that he was? After abandoning you for a hallucination? Swimming in the thought of it, his being felt infirm in a horrifyingly familiar way, a way he'd felt more than thirty times in a row …

The bright red door behind him scraped open again. When he turned, his eye lights shrank to see you there, clinging to the lintel as if letting go would send you adrift on a storm-ravaged sea. Your head of unkempt hair clung to the tears wet on your cheeks. Your shoulders shook. You shambled out into the typhoon.

Sans' eye sockets hollowed out to darkness like dead suns. You couldn't be here. You _shouldn't_ be here. You had to leave, _now,_ before the rift could swallow you up … just like his brother …

"kid," he said more quietly than he wanted, but it was all he had strength for. "kid, no. go back. it's too dangerous …"

He realized you were muttering to yourself. Your auburn eyes, wider than he'd ever seen, caught the light of the rift to glow nearly red. Was it odd, Sans wondered, to think you seemed healthier than before? Your cheeks actually had some color for once …

The nearer you came to the swimming, pulsating light, the more you tasted that rare magic of time. Your determination sang out to it, but to no answer. You reached out a hand. If you could just get close enough …

Sans saw where you were heading. Fear coiled around his insides like a reticulated python. Despite his better judgment and unwilling limbs, he hurried forward. He took firm root between you and your goal. If only he could teleport you away … but his magic ran so low that, even if a shortcut were to work in this unstable atmosphere, he could take you no farther than a few feet.

"the hell are you doin'?" he asked.

You tried to walk around him. He blocked you again. Your hands clutched the hair on your head like a lifeline, as if letting go would leave you to drown in the riptide. You set your teeth.

"please," said Sans, short for breath. "i'll go back with ya. i'll even book a room at the resort, like you wanted …"

"N-no, I have to …"

 _"you have to nothin',"_ he interrupted with more desperation than he'd ever betrayed before. "rift could wipe ya clean from existence. past, present, _and_ future. is that somethin' you want?"

"Maybe."

"frisk."

 _"My name's not Frisk!"_ you snapped.

Sans' eye-sockets hollowed out entirely. As their caves bore into your skin, you sensed their sight running through you like water through a sieve. Just like in Judgment Hall, he was poring over your heart, and you knew then he could see you for the horrible, awful person you were. When he failed to breathe, you couldn't help laughing. It was too painful, too horrible, how fucked up you were, how fucked up the world was, all because of you. And now, he knew it too.

Sans shifted backward just a little. Every bone of his body quaked. Your level of violence was … significantly higher. Could you have been reduced to attacking monsters, just to reach him in time? The Frisk he knew would never do something like that. No, something else must have happened …

"i know it's not," he said quietly. "but what am i s'posed to say? you forgot your real name …"

"Well, I sure as fuck remember now," you said, voice quavering. Your hands found your face. "I remember. _E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g._ "

Sans didn't know what to say. He couldn't tell if you were laughing or crying, but one thing he knew for sure was that you were suffering. His soul ached more and more with every second he lay eyes on you. He lifted his hand, toying with the idea of reaching out to you. Was that even something you wanted?

Past the river of tears, you saw the power to reset forming in a layer deep within the gash. Even without your eyes, past the wild, endless screaming in your red soul you could feel it reaching out to you too, though still too far away. You had to grasp it. You had to undo this whole mess, back to the true beginning, or in the very least just back to forgetting …

Again, you inched nearer to that volatile tear in time. Again, Sans stood in your way. You squalled and clenched your hands into fists so tight your fingernails drew blood.

 _"JUST LET ME RESET,"_ you screamed.

If Sans' sparse magic could run any colder, it would have.

"It's all my fault," you sobbed into the bloody palms of your hands. "If I can go back … maybe I can fix it …"

He felt faint. Gravity had never been a force greater than the one that pulled on his shoulders now. His mouth trembled in search of words before finally whispering, _"you promised, kiddo."_

" _Frisk_ promised."

Sans' mind raced. More of his soul dusted away inside him than ever before. Everything you'd been through, all the laughter and heartache you'd shared over the years, felt to have been dashed against the rocks in one heart-stopping motion. His hope trickled away from him like sand in an hourglass. His hand on his ribs fell through to the cavity behind them as they broke away to dust.

 _"you promised me,"_ he echoed, without really thinking. _"you promised …"_

"As if you wouldn't go back if you could," you said. "Save the one you really care about? I'm just a replacement. I've _always_ been a replacement. _So stop pretending to care._ "

Sans' soul broke in two. Despite all his thoughts to the contrary, his voice wouldn't rise above a decibel. He could only stare, despondent, eyes nothing but cavities as hollow as his chest.

You glared at him, your auburn eyes shining brighter and brighter in the rejuvenating essence of the rift. It had been so long since you felt this strong, and Sans, by contrast, never looked weaker. You could make it past him. Though he didn't understand, it would be better for him, for both of you, for everyone, if you undid this.

His mind was darkening, but he refused to let go. Even if you somehow managed to make it through unscathed, resetting now could just about rip the Underground in half. Everyone could be wiped from existence—Papyrus, Toriel, Alphys, Undyne—but even if that didn't happen, even if you didn't get that far, he couldn't stand by and watch you be destroyed. Even if you didn't care about him anymore … he still loved you.

You walked firmly toward the wavering lights and your lost power, your one and only hope for redemption. As you passed him, Sans stood stiffly, seemingly too frail to move. The lights of his eyes hadn't resurfaced since the start of the argument, but they illuminated faintly now.

Just as you felt the burning intensity of the rift on your outstretched fingers, a skeletal hand took you firmly by the shoulder. It slipped in its own dust to tear you away from the break in time, off into an unruly cyclone of a shortcut. The portal swirled you like Cabernet in a wine glass before casting you out onto the same broken floors just a few feet back. You lifted your head and blanched. The screaming in your heart fell silent.

Sans could only hope he'd succeeded. Falling down already as he was, sliding in his own shoes, he couldn't fight the momentum of pulling you back from the ledge. He had known he might not be able to. Now the rift seared against his back like white-hot silver, eating away the parts of him that hadn't already dusted. Your voice fell distantly over what was left of him to hear it. Though he couldn't be sure it was real, he took it as faint consolation he'd saved you from the void, even if only for a moment. With that last thought, his mind withered away to a peaceful emptiness, and the rift swallowed him whole.

* * *

 **Notes**

OH NO

Don't worry, kids, we got like 8-9 more chapters. ;)

Also, as you probably noticed, we've come to **the second of three major head canons** I've been holding onto for the better part of this year! I am … so excited. If someone else has had this thought, I haven't come across it (which also makes me a little scared).

I've always seen Chara and Frisk represented by the fandom as two entirely separate people. When playing Undertale … that wasn't the sense I got. In my mind, you were _always_ Chara, resurrected by the power of determination to resolve your unfinished business.

When you start the game, you make a choice.

When you choose pacifist, you leave behind the person you were and become the angel of light to save the ones you love. By reaching the end and saving the Underground in pacifist mode, you earn the name Frisk. You _choose_ the name Frisk, because Asriel is right. You aren't Chara anymore. You've grown to become someone else.

When you choose genocide, you let your anger and hatred overcome you and thereby become the angel of death. When you meet Chara at the end of the game, you are facing yourself. Their eyes are open, their cheeks rosy, their skin a natural shade, but that's the only real difference between the two of you. After all, a body that's been dead this long wouldn't have those qualities …

I tweaked it a little to fit the narrative of the fanfic, but that's the main theory. And before you ask, it's possible we won't encounter my third head canon in this story, but it's definitely something I'm going to make art for some time down the road. Possibly a second fic after this one? (Not like a sequel or anything.)

I'm high on finishing this chapter so the next one might roll out pretty quickly. Cross your fingers!

Thank you for reading! If you have thoughts or feelings, I'd love to hear them.

 **Next Up! …**


	12. The Experiment

In his many decades in the underground and few short years above, Sans had never given much thought to the afterlife. While others spent their lives bickering over gods and empty voids, he was content to lie back on his lawn chair, sipping on fancy ketchup packets until the sun fizzled like a wet flame. They could believe whatever the hell or heaven they wanted for all he cared. Questions he couldn't answer just weren't worth the trouble … except now, he _could_. He'd seen the ferry's final stop. After more than thirty times diving headfirst into a river no one should survive, he could be sure he knew the afterlife for what it was, and the afterlife was nothing.

He waited for emptiness to arrive, for his thoughts to fade out into cold oblivion as before. His frazzled mind swayed, smitten with the sensation of falling, but otherwise remained intact. By now, it should have been ash. By now, it should have been nothing. _This_ wasn't nothing. This was something else.

In something else he drifted, hovering in a limbo between time and space, between life and death. No sight. No sound. His senses may as well have been absent, so deep ran the emptiness around him. It would be no surprise if he'd been thrown from existence entirely, redacted from the memories of those who knew him … just like his brother.

* * *

Just a day before it all went wrong, Wingdings had called everyone together for a mandatory team meeting. The small collection of fifteen specialists had gathered in the central hub, past the same red doors Sans had just left behind him. He remembered how Alphys had stood close beside him, their matching lab coats touching. He remembered how aware he had been of his still unwashed sleeve defiling her cleaner clothes. He shied his arm away.

Before reduced to wreckage, the lab had been a mess of a different kind, filled with computers and unusual machines that ran on electricity and raw magic in unison. A persistent hum of energy, broken by the occasional click and beep, pervaded over a silence that stretched long enough to unsettle both Sans and his coworkers. He watched his brother's back, filled with unease for more reasons than the stillness.

In the week since Wingdings had ruptured his own skull, Sans had become more attuned to his behavior. His brother had made some confusing changes, like tearing down illustrated posters or asking them not to wear certain colors. In one star moment, he had fallen backward out of his chair as if something had jumped unexpectedly onto his desk—but whatever it was, no one else had seen it. In this and every other situation, Dings played it off like a joke or a quirk and made fun of himself for his actions. Everyone bought it … except Sans. Whether Dings simply stared into the invisible, carried on conversations under his breath, or dropped everything to hold his face in his hands, Sans noted each moment with mounting concern. He wanted to help him, but in every attempt, his brother brushed him off at the slightest word, like dirt off his sleeve.

At the room's center, Wingdings stared through the circles of his seldom worn glasses at the near-finished time-turner they'd worked so hard to build. What Sans could see of his face looked empty, emotionless, maybe even broken, but in a way very different from the cracks that now tore through his brow and cheekbone. When finally he turned, he didn't look at them, not really.

"For reasons I can't get into right now," he said flatly, "the schedule's been rearranged. We'll be testing the machine tomorrow."

The team didn't respond immediately. They, like Sans, had been frozen in the chill of his words. All Sans' worst fears felt to crash down on him like an avalanche. As the scientists and engineers thawed enough to mutter confusedly among themselves, he only continued to stand there, lights gone from his eyes.

"tomorrow?" he finally stammered. _"are you insane?"_

The team quieted. Alphys grimaced.

Sans regretted his wording immediately. Wingdings still didn't look at him, but by the tiniest twitch of his mouth, Sans knew it had rubbed him the wrong way. He also knew they stood roughly three choice words away from arguing like children in front of their most esteemed colleagues. He trod lightly.

"don't get me wrong," he said. "the changes you made last week solved almost everything, theoretically, but we're still playin' catch up here. the build just ain't stable."

"Then stabilize it."

"it's not that simple," he said as calmly as he could. "conversions are still a fuckin' disaster and just this morning, programming was lookin' at weeks, maybe even months before they've squashed the leftover bugs, assuming no more crawl out …"

"Well … maybe not," spoke up another team member in the back—the project's lead programmer, Clarel.

Sans turned. His eyes pleaded with her not to encourage him.

"It's possible to do a workaround," she said, despite catching his look. "Quick-fix the errors without the trouble of a deeper solve … b-but that wouldn't be cohesive t …"

"Good," said Wingdings. "Whatever we have to do to …"

"it's not safe to take shortcuts … "

 _"Whatever we have to do,"_ Dings reiterated firmly, cutting his brother short. He took a deep breath and passed heavy, tired eyes over every member of the project, except Sans. "I know this is a lot to ask. You can leave if you want—I get it—but if this is going to work, I'm counting on _all_ of you to do the best you can. Understand?"

Every monster exchanged tentative glances.

"Make arrangements if you have to." Dings forced one of his most charismatic smiles. "It's gonna be a long night, kids."

As the team dispersed, Sans immediately grasped for his brother's attention, but in fewer than two breaths the royal scientist had been swept up in the dizzying rush. In the rare moments Sans saw an opportunity, he had difficulty catching his eye. It didn't bother him at first, but after the sixth or seventh time and a not-too-subtle turn of his brother's back, he was convinced Dings intentionally ignored him.

Several excruciatingly long hours later, he managed to annoy his brother into submission. Wingdings threw down his papers, threw back his head, and led him out from the main work area into the hallway. They wound up in a small room, a corner used for little more than storage and whispers. Boxes, files, and outdated equipment lined the walls from floor to ceiling among a few extra chairs and tables. Under a single, warm bulb dangling from its wires, they stood as far away from each other as they could, which was in truth only a few feet. The moment the door clapped shut, Sans opened his mouth.

"ya mind tellin' me what you're thinkin'?" he asked, trying and failing not to sound like the one who raised him.

Dings still avoided his eyes.

"there ain't a lot in the world i'd ask ya not to fuck with, but _this sure as hell's one of 'em."_ Sans paced with what little room he had. "shit's dangerous enough even if we do everythin' right. there's a reason we were on a path to test in ten weeks …"

"Well, I don't have ten weeks."

Sans stopped dead in his tracks. He hadn't thought his nerves could fray any further.

"I had a talk with Asgore," said Dings quietly.

Sans saw his mouth move but hardly processed the words. The lights in his eyes flitted away into darkness.

"He seems to think I should … take a break."

"oh …" Sans shifted his feet. He bit his knuckle, weighing his words cautiously. "you're … you're going to, then?"

At the faint hope Sans had just betrayed, Dings finally faced him, eyes piercing with hurt and incredulity.

"I don't have a choice," he said. He struggled to keep his voice steady. "He's given me until Friday to wrap up what I'm doing, and then … then you'll be stepping in."

Sans' still blackened eye sockets widened. The magic rushed out of him, so far away it felt irreclaimable. "what do you mean, stepping in?"

 _"What else could I mean?"_ Dings clenched his fists, gritted his teeth—but his anger soon dulled to pain. "I know you met with him behind my back," he said. At his brother's prolonged silence, Wingdings' frown returned. _"Say something."_

"i …" Sans felt faint. "i was worried …"

 _"You were worried,"_ Dings laughed softly, but a shimmer of light caught at the corners of his eye sockets. He hid them behind his hand. "Well, that makes it okay, then," he breathed. "I mean forget my life's work. Forget the past five years. Forget how close we were to a breakthrough. _You were worried."_

Sans would have felt a little better if Wingdings had yelled at him, cussed him out, told him to leave, anything but this quiet resignation. Sans had only seen this once before, when he'd been hurt far past the point of anger, deep down into the hollow pits of apathy. Sans had never thought he'd break his little brother's heart like this. He'd never wanted to make him feel like _that_ again.

"it's just a break, right?" Sans asked in an attempt to reassure him. "we can just put the project on hold, then start up again when you come back …"

"You think I'm coming back from this?" Dings muttered.

Sans' heart ached.

"Why would you want that, anyway …"

"you think i _want_ you to give up?"

"Please. All your rambling about the dangers in splitting timestreams, even your cute little name, 'Paradox Project… .' You've never believed in this. You've _hoped_ for this to fail. It's what you wanted from the start, isn't it?"

"dings …"

"Am I wrong?"

"i just think that you've been pushing yourself too hard."

Wingdings laughed, then, a pure bell that filled the entire room from wall to cluttered wall—a sound Sans had once chased like rainbows after a storm, replaced now with thunder on the horizon. The anxieties he felt before only multiplied.

"The entire Underground— _the fate of all monsters_ —rides on this project's success," Dings growled, "and you think _I'm pushing myself too hard?"_

"when's the last time ya got a full night's sleep?" Sans insisted. "when's the last time ya left this place, hung out with friends or … or your baby bro? pappy's growin' up real fast, dings …"

"That's a cheap shot."

"i've been noticin' …" Sans took a small, cautious step forward. "you've been sayin' stuff out loud i don't think you mean to, talking to people who ain't there, or 'bout things that didn't happen. i was sleepin' on it for a while, but last week spooked me wide the fuck awake. i'm terrified you're gonna end up hurting yourself, even more than y …" Sans hesitated, eyeing the cracks running north and south on his brother's bitter face. "than y'already have."

Wingdings didn't say anything for a while, and neither did Sans. Nothing filled their senses but white noise, the subtle sway of the golden light overhead, dust faintly stirring in their wake …

"You just don't get it, do you?" Dings asked, so quietly it could only be heard in a room like this. His shaking voice finally broke, and his spirit seemed to follow suit. "Working on this project. Staying preoccupied. Did you ever stop to think that maybe it's the only thing keeping me sane?"

The words cut through Sans like a Real Knife. His heart dropped into his feet.

"You say you're terrified." Tears were gathering fast, clinging to the bottom edges of Wingdings' eye sockets. "You have no fucking idea. Not knowing what's real, losing control of your own head … it's …"

He looked away. The tears fell down his face as he tried and failed to find a way to explain his feelings without becoming a total wreck.

"I don't sleep," he said quaveringly, "because it leaves my head open. I don't … hang out with friends because I can't stand to let them know what's happening to me, not yet. I don't want to go see Paps because I'm worried I'll mess up, like … like that one time Dad left us in Waterfall, when he thought Mom was watching but we sure as hell know what side of the barrier she chose …"

Sans found himself struggling to keep his own tears inside.

"My imagination is a maze with no exit," Dings went on, "but _science_ … science is a straight path, a constant. It's pure truth. When I'm working on a project like this, I don't have to worry as much. It's … it's getting harder to focus, but at least I can keep my feet on the ground for the most part. Or at least I _could_." The pins of white-hot energy in his eyes met Sans' like polarized stars. "You've taken away gravity."

Sans trembled in his untied sneakers and still dirty lab coat. "dings," he said, "i'm so sorry …"

Wingdings took off his glasses and dried his face on the interior of his black and grey argyle sweater. He cleaned the lenses on the softer material of his shirt underneath, slowly, stalling for composure. He ambled toward the door.

"Yeah." The royal scientist balanced his glasses on the bridge of his nasal bone. "So am I."

The door shut behind him. The sound of it felt to cut the string binding them, even if they could tie the ends back together. Sans lowered the umbrella he'd held over his heart. For longer than he wanted but shorter than he needed, he remained there alone.

What had he done? Did he really have so little respect for his brother to overlook the possibility that he knew, that he was coping, that sometimes it was hard but it could be far, far worse? This wasn't the Surface. Doctors in the Underground didn't know what to do about something like this. He'd watched them fail before, and so had Wingdings. In fact, Dings was probably more intimately aware of the kind of slipshod "help" he could expect. Regardless of what may or may not have been best for him, only now did Sans realize that by talking to Asgore, he had taken the situation entirely out of his brother's hands. Did he have the right to do that? He wasn't a child anymore.

When Sans finally emerged with damp sleeves and blue-flushed eye sockets, he found Alphys waiting for him outside. How she had known to find him there was beyond him, but she'd always been observant. The dinosaur scientist took one look at him and pulled him into a hug.

* * *

At first, Sans considered leaving, but his worries kept him there late, troubleshooting alongside everyone else. When time came for him to pick up Papyrus from his babysitter, Alphys offered to handle the task instead. She even volunteered to look after him through the night.

"no, you should stay," Sans had argued at first. "boss doesn't even want me here."

"Did he t-tell you that?" Alphys had asked. "I'm just an intern. I'm not a lot of g-good at this point, but he n-n- _needs_ you. You wanted to m-make it up to him, right?"

As time wore on into the night and back into day again, despite his fears Sans couldn't help feeling some pride in his coworkers. Every essential team member had stayed behind, even most of the helpers and associate staff. By the time morning had rolled around, the machine had been polished up and fitted with a fully functional build, just as Wingdings had wanted.

While the rest of the team readied to test with a few last minute precautions and adjustments, Wingdings stood just beside the machine, inputting code and key phrases into the keyboard just below the monitor. Sans approached him cautiously, tensely, nearly afraid to meet his eyes—but this time Dings did not avoid him. He faced him as if it were any other day, no longer angry, no longer upset, only tired.

"Hey," he said.

"hey." Sans mirrored his somber tone. He stalled just a moment, messing with the loose string in his pockets. "how … how're you …"

Though Sans chose to leave his question unfinished, Wingdings still understood. His eyes softened.

"you sure about this?" Sans asked instead.

Wingdings sighed with just a little exasperation. "I mean I'd better be. Can you imagine how pissed C. Flamesman would be if I pulled the plug now?"

"yeah, that guy's a hothead."

Dings snorted into his hand involuntarily, and at that Sans couldn't help smiling.

"could say he's a little _hot under the collar._ "

"Stop, he might hear you," Wingdings snickered. "His ears are probably _burning_ right now."

They both snuck glances over their shoulders at the small, unassuming fire elemental in particular, who took a moment to catch their eyes. When he did, they spun back and devolved into poorly-subdued laughter. Flamesman rolled his eyes.

"listen, uh …" As Sans stared at the machine, his smile slowly fell. "after this is over, can we … could we talk? no bullshit, just say what we want to say and …" He chewed on his words reluctantly, his heart sinking once again. "figure this out."

Wingdings considered him a long, painful moment. The longer it took, the more hope Sans lost.

"I don't know," Wingdings finally answered through a clear stitch in his chest. "Maybe after I've had some time …"

"s'fine," Sans said. It wasn't the answer he wanted, but he understood. "take all the time ya need."

He retreated to what he deemed a safe, comfortable distance from both his brother and his colleagues. He picked out a poster across the room and distracted himself from his feelings by reading the equations. How he wished Alphys were there.

Wingdings watched him with only slight delay before resuming his task, though more guiltily than before.

After a few more tweaks and a quadruple check that everything was in its proper place, the royal scientist flipped the starter switch. To everyone's delight, the machine began to hum.

"Thanks, team," Dings said with a tired smile. "I know it wasn't fair of me to ask in the first place, but … here we are. You've done incredible work."

On a small table in front of the temporal flux manipulator rested what they'd chosen as their test subject: a small, empty birdcage, a symbol of the grander plan they had in mind. If the machine worked as expected, its timeline would be isolated and wiped from the world with no effect on those surrounding it.

Wingdings input the proper specifications, adjusted a dial or two, and tapped a few buttons. He rested his hand on the main lever and took a deep, deep breath.

"Here go the last five years of our lives," he said with a grin. Then, to himself, "No pressure."

The lever clicked down into place with a satisfying "ka-chunk." As the power accumulated, a string of bulbs lit upwards along the shell, one by one. Science and magic together encased the birdcage with webs of light. While Sans and his coworkers shielded their eyes from the intensifying brilliance, Wingdings looked directly into it, determined not to miss a single thing. By the time the light faded, the machine was in cooldown and the cage was gone.

Sans couldn't be sure what had just happened. He knew the machine had been run, but he couldn't recall what they had made disappear or if they had even remembered to put something there in the first place. He was sure they wouldn't have forgotten such a paramount component, and the machine couldn't truly run without a target. He held his spinning head in one hand.

After many confused glances among the team, Wingdings finally spoke up.

"If I had to guess … it worked," he said, beaming. "Interesting, though. Does anyone remember what we put there?"

No one answered. They couldn't.

Sans met his brother's eye uneasily, more unsettled than he had already been to start. Though he had theorized this reaction among countless others, it still didn't feel right. If removing something as small and meaningless as a birdcagewas this disorienting, how much worse would it be to wipe the timeline of something as significant as the barrier? Was that something they were willing to risk?

"I'm sure it'll be easier to talk about here in a minute …" said the royal scientist, and initiated the proper sequence to restore the timeline to its previous state. He pushed up on the lever with another satisfying "ka-chunk" … but the machine failed to respond. He frowned, double checked the configurations. They were all correct.

Before anyone could say a word, a cracking sound tore through the room. The table that had once held a birdcage split down the middle—or at least their perception of it did. It shifted and shook, quivering between states of existence and nonexistence. Watching it was dangerous; Sans could feel his mind short-circuiting in just the tiniest split second he had allowed himself.

A furious string of messages cascaded down the monitor at breakneck speed. Dings' eyes darted over them in a struggle to keep up. With every random line he managed to catch, his sockets widened further. He abandoned the time-turner and crept nearer to the now empty, fragmenting table, for a rare moment at a loss. What had begun as a crack soon became a hole, eating reality around it in a slowly expanding circle like unraveling cloth. He glanced at his team to verify that this was indeed not a hallucination.

Sans looked down. Lingering dust and debris were sweeping past his ankles as to a strong magnet, and the floor had begun to spiderweb with tiny fissures. A light gathered in the atmosphere around him, faint at first but gaining intensity. All spread inward toward the table and his brother like a closing ring, toward the vacuum in time they'd just created.

Sans lifted desperate eyes to his brother, only to find Dings had already done the same. Sans had never seen an expression so horrified, so hopeless. They both knew what was about to happen. They both knew they didn't stand a chance.

Sans' feet sought traction in the earth; his knees bent, ready to run to him, to protect him, even if that meant diving straight into the eye of the storm … but he didn't get that far.

Time might have stopped, or not at all. To Sans, it felt like slow motion as the forming ribcage of a skeletal dragon enclosed around him. Its bones ensnared him like a venus fly trap, cutting short a split-second glimpse of his brother's eyes alight in azure blue. Its wings folded around him in another protective layer, and then another behind its great antlered skull pressed flat to the ground … just in time.

A single explosion burst outward from the test site with a cacophonous roar. Half the floor crumpled back as if made of cardboard. Posters tore clean off the wall, including the one he had been reading just moments before. Through gaps in the bone around him, Sans watched with horror as his coworkers were swallowed in a flash of bright white so instantaneous it took him moments later to process what had happened. They didn't even have time to scream before disintegrating into sheets of dust and then … nothing. Even the bones of his brother's dragon around him dematerialized down to its ribs and wings, and in the aftermath, they too splintered away into ash.

Shaking and dazed on his hands and knees, Sans almost puked, but there was nothing inside him to expel. His tympanic cavity rang with a piercing, high pitched bell like a Tibetan singing bowl, as if the zen could calm him. He had seen death before. When the humans had come for his family, he had watched monster upon monster fall around him before spared by the blindfold of his father's arm. But this wasn't the same. He'd never watched someone die so horribly, so quickly … but … who were they? Friends? Strangers? And who was this person he missed now, someone who refused to leave his head, the most important someone at the center of it all …

A distorted scream overshadowed every question he might have had. It emanated from the wild, undulating sphere of brilliance dancing at the lab's center, where the table had once stood, where the blast had originated. That was where _he_ had stood, eyes bright with magic …

Sans rushed through his vertigo into the storm among floating debris, among pieces of the machine hovering through a strange red fluid he didn't recognize. The closer he came, the clearer his memories, until he began piecing together who it was his soul wouldn't allow him to abandon. He needed to save him. _Step._ His best friend. _Step._ His little brother. _Step._

 _Wingdings._

"dings!" he shouted into the chaos. "dings, c-can you hear me?"

The muffled screaming only continued. Sans looked desperately around him for any sort of tool he could use, a beam or table leg or anything to extend inside the portal, but everything within reach had been either broken away or dematerialized.

He braced himself and reached into the raging light. At first, he recoiled, doubled back in pain—but his hand was still there. His hand was still _capable_. He reached inside again, and this time, he pushed forward. It burned to the touch—a fire twice as hot, stripping the life energy from his very soul—but he didn't care. His brother's voice was still screaming out in a pain he more than deserved to share, and he would die before letting it continue.

His vision tunneled. He had made it deep enough to submerge his entire right arm, up to his shoulder and the side of his face. The raw, unstable energy twisted around him like a cyclone, resisting him on one side, drawing him deeper on the other. He worried he might split in two before standing a chance of succeeding, but when he looked into the abyss … he found him.

Just past the brink of this new rift in time, his brother's form drifted deeper and deeper into the darkness, melting amid a wash of red that had followed after him. His face was softening into something reminiscent of a theater mask, his hands into something smooth. By now, he had stopped screaming. His mind had stolen away to somewhere else, lost in an ocean of pain and frightful discombobulation.

If Sans had known he was destined to fail, if he had known this would be the last thing his right eye ever saw, he never would have gone this far. This horrible image would haunt him for the rest of his life. He knew it even then.

"dings," Sans called, though faintly.

He heard him. He lifted his head, and though horror painted his morphing face to see his brother there, a flicker of hope still lit his eyes. He extended his hand.

They just weren't close enough.

Their fingers were inches away, but the closer Sans came, the farther in his brother seemed to fall. Sans stretched out to him more and more, desperate, tears flying to be lost and forgotten in the darkness … but he wasn't made of metal. Before long, his right eye lost sight; his mind lost focus; his arm lost strength. His body couldn't stand to teeter on the edge between reality and the void. He had to choose one or the other. As his mind slowly surrendered power, he lost the privilege of making that decision. His instincts tore him back from his brother, safe onto the side of survival.

As he collapsed backward onto the cold lab floor, Sans blacked out only long enough for the rift to close behind him. A thin white line still tore through reality like a cracked mirror, shivering, ready to spread further at the slightest touch. He lay there a dazed moment, panting, panicking, trembling more than the floor beneath him. As soon as he was able, Sans dragged himself to his knees. He pinned his useless right arm to his side with the other hand. He blinked, adjusting to the loss of vision in his right socket. He stared at a portal no longer there.

He only had one hope left. His left eye scanned the room urgently and found it crumpled at the far wall: the machine. He scrambled forward, staggering serpentine behind a swimming head. He forced the remnants of an invention upright, despite the fact he barely managed to do the same for himself. If he could just initiate the reversal sequence …

No plug-ins. No power source. He reconnected a few wires and struggled to get it running with his own magic, but as he should have expected, it didn't respond. He mashed buttons, kicked it, flipped the lever even though he knew it wouldn't do a damn thing, back and forth and back again.

In his desperation, he hardly noticed more debris running past his ankles. New cracks were tearing home through the ground, inward to the rift. As he saw the light gathering overhead, the destruction mounting exactly as it had only moments ago, he knew he owned only seconds before following the same path as his colleagues. But he refused. He couldn't die just yet, not when he was the only one left who could fix this. As he clung fast to the broken time-turner, forehead pressed to the shattered monitor, he wished with all his heart for another chance, to survive, to be safe outside the reach of this newborn god of death.

His stomach reeled, and before he understood what had happened, he had been spat out onto the hallway floor outside. The machine crashed down beside him among a loose pile of ash and debris. Not seconds later, a resounding blast shook the corridor walls, a frightening reminder of what would have destroyed him if he hadn't just … had he just teleported?

After that, Sans simply lay there. He stared at the ceiling emptily, listening to the cycling explosions slowly losing strength and frequency. The floor vibrated underneath him, harsh at first but softer with every burst. Once they had finally faded away to silence, he was left to nothing but his thoughts.

Tears pooled in his eye sockets until they flooded over. His chest heaved. His hands shook and clattered against the ceramic floor. He'd lost him. He'd really lost him. One moment his brother had been there, smiling with anticipation, and the next … How could he have been so selfish to take back his hand like that? How could he have left him there in such misery, dying in the deep dark alone? It should have been him. _All of this was his fault._

He slowly, tremblingly found his feet. There was no time to grieve, not yet. Alphys was on her way back by then and he needed to warn her. He needed to get to the elevat—he was in the elevator. Sans looked wildly around with his one good eye and collapsed dizzily to stand against the wall. Though he questioned it at first, he had unmistakably felt the world shifting around him. He had done it again, this … shortcut.

As he rode the lift upward, he stared down his reflection in the glossy metal doors. His right eye had been snuffed out, but if he focused his magic, a pupil lit easily in its hollows—even if useless. In time, summoning that little speck of light would become second nature. His right arm trembled, filled with pins and needles as he forced it into his lab coat pocket. He'd never felt so simultaneously weak and immensely powerful in his life. His magic might as well have been off the charts, but his body felt just shy of dusting …

The elevator chimed. The doors split, and he realized too late he had been leaning against them. He stumbled out onto the upper level and straight into Alphys.

She yelped but caught him the best she could. His weight dragged her to her knees, and on the floor again he gawked up at her. He spun his eyes around, wondering if he'd once more jumped through time-space, but it was only serendipity that had brought them together.

"alph," he said urgently. "al, don't go down there …"

"S-Sans, what's going on?" she asked.

"the experiment. it went wrong. wingdings, everyone … th-they didn't make it. wingdings didn't make it. d-dings is …"

"C-calm down." She stared intently, her face overflowing with concern and confusion. She hesitated a moment before her uncertainty won through. "Wh-what experiment are you t-t-talking about?" she asked. "Who … who's Wingdings?"

To hear the words, everything that had happened, everything he'd just lost and left behind, all crashed down on him at once. His brother, his friends … they hadn't just been torn from his arms. The machine had torn them from the universe itself, just as it was designed to do. No one would mourn them; no one would even remember. His eyes darkened. His soul lost determination.

Was he doomed to forget too?

* * *

He woke in the hospital a day later, half blind, weakened in his right arm, diminished to one maximum HP. His friends and colleagues had been wiped from the universe. His brother had been trapped, most likely dead in the void between time and space. And yet here he lay, alive, the sole survivor of a horror unlike any the world had seen. The plain white tiles of the ceiling overhead lent him no distraction. His tears rose again to spill rivers down his face. Why did it have to be him?

He thought he had been alone, but after a few moments of grief, he felt a small hand pat the top of his head. The breath caught in his throat, and a new ache sprang to life in his chest. He turned. Hiding in the blind spot of his right-hand vision sat someone more necessary to him than the magic running through his bones.

Papyrus.

His brother was so small, then, so precious, a whole lifetime of greatness waiting eagerly ahead of him. He smiled his toothy smile, confused but empathetic just the same. Sans' misery both grew and dulled in that moment. Papyrus would never know what he'd lost … but maybe for a child, it was better to forget.

Sans returned his smile, and would never let it fall for him again. Just setting eyes on such a sweet, unassuming face, he knew without question what was most important and what he needed to do.

As soon as he could walk again, Sans wasted no time leaving that burning wasteland. He took Papyrus with him, away from the Core, the lab, the kingdom. He took him as far away as he could from the worst day of his life, deep into the middle of rural nowhere among snowy pine forests and soft bunny-folk. Nothing ever happened there. There, he could protect the last light of his life, the only thing that mattered. He would do better this time.

Later, he returned for what remained of the machine and any research he could salvage. He sealed away the button to the _true_ True Lab behind a loose sheet of metal, soldered convincingly into the wall just like any other panel. Among the papers he searched, he found a picture in his brother's desk, a drawing Papyrus had scrawled out of the three of them together. He pocketed the image and, once home, added a message to himself below, a reminder, an oath.

 _don't forget._

* * *

The longer Sans floated in this nothing world, the more it became _something_ instead. What began as a faint light in every direction gained more and more strength until revealing the details of his scenery. Soon, gravity pulled at his back with increasing strength until he could stand on his feet. He staggered upright. His awestruck eyes swept the room around him. He had ended up exactly where he left off except … not at all.

 _This_ world was painted in grey.

* * *

 _ **NOTES**_

 _I've been looking forward to this chapter since I started writing the whole fic, and now it's here! I hope you liked it. I'm revved up for the next chapter, and I know I say this a lot, but_ hopefully _it won't take me that long to pump it out. This one was a doozy, and work's been a little hectic lately. I still stick by what I've said before about updating **at minimum** once a month, so there's that faint consolation._

 _If you have thoughts or feelings, I love hearing them! Thank you for reading!_

 _ **Next time:** Welcome to the void, Sans._


	13. Encaged

You screamed.

As if that could change anything, as if he would return to life if you stomped your foot hard enough. Your voice shook the walls of your lungs, of your throat, of the broken lab, but it couldn't shake him back together again. Those vanished specks of dust couldn't hear you. No one could. Sans was gone, dead, scattered into a million pieces as he'd done to himself thirty times before. You had blocked his path then, just as he'd done for you now.

Your hands covered your mouth, but your auburn eyes bore into the rift after him. It had grown thinner, tight-lipped in satisfaction of a full meal. The power to undo time, the power to force the world backwards to the start of your journey, churned in its belly beyond reach. In the worst possible way, Sans had just proven to you that chasing it meant death. What good was time travel, anyway, if it couldn't bring him back?

You curled over your knees, pressed your forehead to the cold, broken floor. Why did you care? This person you had been pretending to be, _Frisk,_ didn't exist anymore. Your memories had devoured them, just as the rift had devoured Sans. You were Chara, the black cat, feasting on the luck of everyone around you. You were the demon, the darkness, the destroyer of all things good. Sans' downfall was just another thread in a fabric you'd been weaving all your life. Why should you have expected anything different?

You sank to lay there, defeated, reduced to the worst version of yourself you'd ever known.

* * *

Sans felt as if he were standing under a spotlight. Though this grey mirror appeared every bit to be the test area he'd left behind, he noticed that the walls and ceiling had been replaced with an inky darkness, into which the floors frayed like poorly cut cloth. The coldness of that emptiness bit at him even from there.

He gaped slack-jawed above the crater where the rift had once split reality like a crazed smile. Though its scars on the room around him remained intact, the rift itself had disappeared. Not even a flutter of the air led him to believe it hid there, taunting him. He reached out a hand to the empty air, and his insides twisted. Regardless of where he'd ended up, there was no going back from here.

His attention soon fell to a small table, standing undisturbed in the crater's center. The flooring around it seemed perfectly preserved, unharmed, hovering as if in its own bubble of existence. His eye sockets widened. It was the same table they had used to hold their test object so many years ago, although the birdcage itself was nowhere to be seen. He looked down past the lip of the shallow crater, debating a closer look.

At that moment, you screamed. The sound startled him amid the otherwise perfect silence, echoing down into the pit of his ribcage. He whipped around. There you were, exactly where he'd left you. You knelt with your hands to your mouth, staring through him into where the rift had once cut open air. He neared you cautiously, eyes round as perfect circles.

"kid?" he muttered.

You didn't seem to notice him. He watched you drop your head to the floor, shaking, your forehead to the grey tiles. As he reached out a hand to touch your back, his fingers fell straight through.

That's right, he remembered. As far as you could tell, he had fallen. He too thought he had collapsed into the void as nothing more than insentient dust. Instead, here he stood, retaining all form, intellect, and, for some reason, color. He reached under his shirt and found his ribcage restored along with every inch of him, as if the clock had rewound to only a few hours past. He supposed the rift could do anything it pleased, but … the whole thing felt too fortuitous.

"sorry, bud," he sighed, though he doubted you could hear him. "fucked it all right up, didn't i?"

Past you, from the shadow of the hallway peered a round, white set of eyes. Sans' soul wound into a coil. Framed in the red doorway, Goner Kid watched him with an expression as empty as she was of pigment. Though she said nothing at all, her presence alone was enough to renew the fires of hope in his chest.

She backed into the hallway, an invitation to follow.

He turned his eyes to you and forced his soul to still. Though he wanted more than anything to stay by your side, the truth of it was that he had already left it. He had made his decision when he abandoned you for the rift, and as much as he might have come to regret that choice, it was too late. It felt bittersweet to think that you would remember him. If anything, he had doomed you to the same ghosts that haunted him all his life.

He left you a final time.

As he stepped away from you, the universe under his feet flipped and folded like grasping, interlocking fingers into another room, then yet another, and another. In a matter of seconds, he and his guide had walked from the deepest recesses of the True Lab into the bright caverns of Hotland. The sudden transitions confused him at first, but he continued to trek forward, following Goner Kid's confident lead into the changing shadow puppets of reality.

The farther away from the lab he journeyed, the farther in these walls of total darkness seemed to close. Patches of the grey world around him splintered off into the void like sand spilled on freshly paved asphalt. He had stepped accidentally into one of these puddles as he passed, and immediately regretted it.

The patch had been frighteningly, frighteningly cold, an impressive statement from one who'd been known to sleep under several blankets of snow nonplussed. It was no underestimation to say it was about as frigid as he could expect the vacuum of space farthest from the warmth of a burning star. Then, his foot went numb. He couldn't move so much as his big toe before he yanked his leg away. The place where it had touched the emptiness took several painstaking moments to flare back to life with the burning fires of reanimation. He took great care to avoid so much as a shadow after that.

Past the slowly dying flames of Undyne's home, past the maze of bridges, past the lakes and waterfalls and eerily silent echo flowers, he finally found himself without a guide. Goner Kid herself had folded away from him off into some room or dimension beyond his reach. After spinning circles searching for even the tip of her tail, he realized all at once he stood just outside a grey replica of his house.

Faint vibrations in the air turned his head to just beside the mailboxes. If he looked hard enough, he could see Undyne and Papyrus in the snow just outside, hurling increasingly competitive snowballs at each other. Strange that his vision of you had been so clear when theirs was so faint. He couldn't hear what they said, only the echoes of what might have been shouts and laughter. He reached out a hand. Just as before, it only phased through.

Then, he heard something else: the faint, high octave hum of metal on metal, like rusty hinges, like a park swing swaying slowly in the wind. He cautiously tracked the sound behind his home, between the trees to the snowy edge of the river, or rather what was left of it. On the brink sat a figure in black and white, facing where the grey world shattered into darkness like broken glass. A birdcage rested on his lap, the same as no one remembered. He swung its door idly open and closed, listening to the monotony of its soft cries as if pretending a bird sang captive inside.

Sans couldn't breathe. His spine shook until his bones rattled, smothered in the fabric of his clothes. He touched a hand to the black bark of the pine beside him. His meager magic felt to have run away into the void rampant around them.

 _Wingdings._

* * *

The longer you knelt beside the rift, the less you felt rejuvenated, the more you sensed your strength begin to wane. You wondered, if you lingered here long enough, would it take back what was given to you? Your mind, your soul, your life? Would it matter, if you let it have you? You clenched your fist over the dust and rubble on the floor. No. You couldn't die. Not yet. Not _here._

You walked hollowly back the way you'd come. The hallway's inconsistency no longer bothered you. You would likely get there eventually, and it wouldn't matter if you didn't.

You found the elevator doors, and the moment they closed behind you, the power went out. Your stomach balled and somersaulted as a sickeningly familiar voice hissed as volatile as a gas leak through the air. It had contacted you through your phone in the past, but you didn't have that this time. More than a hundred tries had come and gone since it took you off guard, but this time was different. In the first few instances, you hadn't recognized it, but by now you had come to know it was Flowey.

"It's been a long time, hasn't it …?"

"Give it a rest, hyperdeath," you interrupted, voice as cold and sharp as broken ice.

You could hear his roots coiling around the elevator box, sealing it shut. He didn't answer you for a while, but didn't raise the lift either. You stood in silence and darkness, only waiting.

"So," he said, in his usual, cheery falsetto, "you've finally snapped out of it, huh, _Chara?"_

You didn't respond.

"I knew it was you," he sneered. "Idiot. You can't fool me."

"Sure fooled myself for a while."

"You can't run away, either," his voice echoed through what could soon become a metal coffin. "Can't _abandon_ me, like you did in the Ruins. This is it. Without the power to reset, I've already won. The world is going to end and there's nothing you can do about it."

"But I don't _have_ to do anything," you said with a disparaging smile, though your insides felt to weigh heavy with pain. Your auburn eyes caught a sliver of light in the door to burn red. "All I have to do is stand back and watch you fail. Even if you somehow managed to get everyone's souls, you don't have what it takes. You _never_ have."

Flowey huffed bitterly. "You always underestimate me."

" _Under_ estimate?" you laughed. "If anything, I've _over_ estimated you. When we left through the barrier, you were the one who got cold feet. When I lent you my power to reset, you wasted it. When you tried to take back my soul in the Ruins, you lost to a single fireball. You're weak. You'll fail at this now, just like I've watched you do before, over and over and over …"

"Whatever. If you're trying to psyche me out, it's not going to work. There's no way this can fail."

"Then why are we still here?" you asked calmly, quietly.

The part of you that was still Frisk cowered inside. You didn't speak to people like this. You were better than that. You stared hollowly into this reflection you now recognized. It was you, but …

"So you're better off on your own, without me," Flowey sneered. "You've always been like that. Leaving me out of your games. I was never good enough for you."

Your heart stung with a unique pain you hadn't felt in years.

"Is that why _he's_ not here?" The glee in his voice returned. "Not-as-smiley trashbag was more pitiful and worthless to you than I ever was. I bet you threw him into the dump where he belongs. Or did he give the noose another go?"

Your chest felt tight all over again, not only with sadness, but with self-loathing. You felt a million fingers pointing at you from beyond the walls of your suspended prison, and the emotions pulled inward on you like a black hole. You wanted to sink into yourself all over again.

"He did, didn't he?" He burst out laughing. "Boy, I can't wait to tell the Flowey Fan Club. Just imagine the look on Papyrus' face, when I tell him how you dragged his brother into the dirt, pushing and shoving him until he just couldn't take it anymore. Do you think he'll cry? Do you think he'll be angry?"

Memories of the promise you'd made to Papyrus, that you'd look out for Sans, that you'd ensure his survival, drove your heart like a stake into the ground. You pinched your thigh in exchange for empty eyes. You wouldn't dare let Flowey see he'd succeeded in hurting you.

"Are you done?" you asked.

"Oh, no, not even close," jeered the flower. "I haven't even turned the key."

You felt the elevator shudder just a little, enough to throw off your balance.

"See you soon," he said, _"Chara."_

* * *

Sans gazed as if frozen at the figure's back ahead. After all this time, after so many years of grief and denial and efforts to both pull him back and let him go, here Wingdings sat. He stared straight ahead into the nothingness, eyes wide and empty as if to match their darkness. They seemed lost in the repetition of waves as they rose in a half-hearted attempt to touch the sky before dying in the abyss. He muttered gently, incoherently under his breath.

"dings," Sans whimpered.

Wingdings stopped speaking but didn't acknowledge him. His hold of the birdcage intensified to the point his melted hands began to tremble. His shoulders squared.

Though fearful of what he might find, Sans inched around to the riverbank. He peered carefully into his brother's eye sockets, breath bated. Just as he had seen on the day he lost him, his face had been smoothed into something of a mask, although his right side had been more severely affected than his left. The lights of his eyes were absent and his face stoic, as if his mind had been stolen somewhere else entirely.

A glow emitted from the belly of the birdcage in his lap. The moment his eyes landed on it, Sans blanched from ivory to pure white. Hovering inside, a small, bright monster soul spun in slow revolution like a music box ballerina. Sans stared at it a moment, horrified, before forcing his wet eyes again to his brother's.

"dings, i …"

"Go away," he said hollowly, flatly.

Sans gaped, taken aback. "oh … i-i thought …"

"Go away," he said again, more firmly though more quietly. "You're not real. None of this is real."

San's soul mimicked the birdcage's captive to understand what was happening. "n-no, that ain't it, bro," he said. He knelt down directly in front of him and smiled, however meagerly. "it's me. really. 'm here."

Wingdings began to laugh, then, quietly at first, then rolling into a deeper, madder, if painful hysteria. Sans' worries reached new heights.

"You'd never be stupid enough to come here," he bit.

"dings."

 _"_ _Shut up."_

The ground fell away from them into the yawning mastodon jaws of the void. Pure darkness surrounded them both, with no trace of the world they had left behind. That numbing coldness Sans had previously encountered enveloped him, as if thrown naked into the Antarctic. He could feel it eating away at him, slowly paralyzing him from head to toe. He gasped.

"All these timelines are protected," Wingdings barked. "Every single one."

Faint lines wove away from Wingdings' soul in a hundred directions, cutting through the darkness like a spider's web. Though the rest spun miles away to be lost in the dark, one of them strung to the soul inside the birdcage, which had left his arms to hover free. Another, brighter than the others, led directly to Sans. It was this one Wingdings took into his hands.

"I would _feel_ it," he snarled. "I would _know_ if …"

Wingdings trailed off incoherently. His angered face softened with confusion. He stared at the line in his hands and where it led. His body shook like a railcar losing grip of the track. He began muttering again, very quietly.

Sans could feel his magic dying. He couldn't speak. He couldn't breathe. With what little strength he could still control, he cautiously extended his hands to his brother's face. To be touched, Wingdings stiffened, and the lights of his eyes finally sparked back to life. They raced up and down Sans' body, shocked, even horrified, but more than anything, lucid. Never had a hallucination been so solid.

The grey world folded back into place beneath them, from the river to the house and the streets of Snowdin past them. The birdcage plummeted to the ground and rolled away, though the soul inside remained unharmed in a bubble of antigravity. Sans coughed and cursed. His hands fell to Wingdings' shoulders, and he struggled a moment to catch his breath. Every part of him felt on fire.

Dings stared breathlessly down at Sans, who hung from his collar like a scarf. He lifted a hesitant hand to his brother's coat sleeve and felt slowly, disbelievingly up its pathway to a cheekbone warm with tears— _real, tangible tears._

"Sans?" he said with the unsteady voice of one who'd stumbled upon a long-abandoned hope.

The smaller skeleton's breath halted at his teeth, at his brother's long-lost touch. How long had it been since he even _dreamed_ of hearing his name in that voice? His face leaned into that smoothened hand a moment before lifting his head to look him in the eyes. "dings?"

Wingdings searched him a moment and then covered his face. "I'm shit to look at, aren't I?"

Sans' heart sank a moment before rising with a bittersweet smile.

"yeah." He pried the curtain of his brother's hands away. "best shit i've seen in a hundred years."

Wingdings sputtered with laughter, then, despite the water in his eyes.

Sans' heart soared. There it was, his favorite sound in the world, the sound he would have lept the moon to hear just once. He wrapped his arms around him, and Wingdings melted a second time.

* * *

The elevator skyrocketed so quickly it flattened you to the floor. As it crashed to a stop, you launched a few inches into the air, then landed in a heap of tender bruises. You growled an expletive or two and lifted yourself to your feet. As the elevator doors snapped shut behind you, the rustle of leaves and crunching branches crackled into your ears. You didn't have to look back to know Flowey had coiled his vines around the door, ensuring you remained here to the very end.

He didn't have to. You had one last hope to redeem yourself and that hope lay ahead, at the end of Asgore's trident.

As you traveled the balcony walkway overlooking the vibrant city of New Home, your heart sank to consider your last pleasant moments with Sans, when he had shown you those magic-luminant streets for the first time. That is, the first time for _Frisk_. You had been to the city several times in the early years, hand in hand with your mother and father and …

You shook these thoughts of family and the tears they threatened to stir. You took a breath and closed your eyes. You would make it through this. You only had to survive a little further, until your soul fell into Asgore's hands … or Asriel's. Whatever the outcome, after today, the world could move on and do what it pleased without you. You wouldn't destroy anyone else's life. Nothing would be your fault anymore.

Fighting your nostalgia became impossible as you reached the doorstep of Asgore's home, what had once been _your_ home after a short stay in the Ruins. The Core had been completed only a few years past when you fell, and with New Home's finished construction, the royal family had been preparing to make the move from that ruinous old haven to a better place. You had made the exodus alongside them. You remembered how Toriel had commented that, if only you had fallen sooner, they might have planned for your own room. At the time, you would have to share …

You stared into your and Asriel's old bedroom. Your two beds flanked the walls, yours to the left, his to the right. The toys he used to play with remained beside his bed exactly where he'd left them, along with the macaroni pictures on the walls and your clothes in the closet. You remembered sharing his sweaters. It was all they had to give you.

Two boxes lay on the floor beside each bed, and you already knew what hid within. So much more than that, you remembered that the chest on the left had belonged to you, and the chest on the right to Asriel.

You went to his first. Inside, you found the heart-shaped locket, gold-plated, inscribed with the phrase, "Best Friends Forever." As Frisk, you had never been able to get it open, but as Chara you remembered that the clasp had been jammed at your fault, and the trick thereafter had been to twist it open at a particular angle. You hesitated. You weren't sure you were ready to see his face. You weren't sure you were ready to see your own. Nevertheless, you now stared down at this heart-enshrined photo in your hands, a record of a carefree, happy life that no longer existed. A life you'd ruined. A life you realized all too late you should have clung to and cherished.

You touched the image of Asriel's beaming face. The sepia photo had aged; the camera that took the photo had been a brand new model at the time, but had fallen down broken into the dump. Reconstructing it had been no problem for that shy, quirky skeleton man, the one who only came by to talk science and drop clues about the chocolate he'd hidden for you around the house … oh. That was him, wasn't it? That was Sans' brother. You hadn't spoken much, but he had always smiled at you, even if behind a shadow of unease. You recognized that smile now, distorted in a grey room in Waterfall.

As you stared at the photograph, you considered how Sans must have felt, losing his brother as he did. Both Wingdings and Asriel had been caught in a Limbo each their own, well beyond the reach of helping hands. Sans had been naive to think he could save him, just as you had been naive to think you could save Asriel. You couldn't save anyone. It was in your nature to destroy. Try as you might, you would only fail to save him, just as you'd failed to save Sans.

Your eyes drifted to the box on your left. A worn dagger had been trapped within. You considered a hundred different ways to put it to use, but you were brave enough for none of them. You affixed the old locket around your neck and left the knife to rest in its coffin.

* * *

"Didn't think you'd come," Wingdings mumbled, muffled in the fur of Sans' hood.

Sans didn't know what to say. After countless years building reunion speeches in his head, now that he was finally here, he couldn't recall a single word. He simply held on for dear life, afraid the dream would slip away.

"are you … are you mad?" he managed to piece together.

"Oh, definitely, definitely 'mad,'" Dings snickered, "but angry? No."

Though Sans couldn't see his brother's face, he could tell he was smiling. They separated, then, and regarded each other with matching stars for eyes.

The longer Sans observed the damage done to him, the more pain gathered behind his sternum. Beyond the obvious disfigurement, there were circles under his eyes to dwarf his own, discoloration in his bones, and a tremble through his every molecule. His voice, too, left him more quietly than he remembered. He seemed haggard, tired, as fragile as a crystal dish balancing on the tip of his finger. In his eyes Sans found the strain of someone who had been tormented by a sight farther than what should be seen. As Wingdings looked at him now, Sans got the sense he also stared far past him.

"if i hadn't …" Sans began.

"I should have listened."

"but if i'd just …"

"It's okay."

"i shouldn't have …"

 _"_ _It's okay."_

 _"_ _it's not,"_ Sans finally snipped. "will you just shut up a second and let me apologize?"

 _"_ _No,"_ Dings snapped, just as harshly.

Sans gaped.

"Every day of your life, you've been apologizing to me," said Wingdings. "At this point it's like a fucking bedtime prayer. So, no. I'm done. I won't let you be sorry anymore. _It's not your fault."_

For a moment, they simply knelt there in silence. Never in all these years had Sans expected this kind of response. He felt empty, confused, unsure of his emotions. He had been hoping all this time for the chance to beg Wingdings' forgiveness, and now … _he wouldn't let him?_ Sans gazed off into the darkness around them, though it seemed a little closer than before.

"but i gave up," he said hollowly.

Sans felt the snow shift to his right and realized Wingdings had moved to sit beside him. The forgotten scientist wrapped unsteady arms around his long legs, rested his chin between his knees. He kept his mouth shut for a few moments as if gathering his thoughts.

"You're here now," he said finally with a small, encouraging smile.

Sans didn't reply, only listening to the faint sounds of their breathing amid silence. Wingdings watched him closely, even if Sans didn't meet his eyes.

"It's amazing, really," Dings continued faintly. "I don't know if it has to do with your limited exposure, like antibodies from a vaccine, or … or maybe something to do with our unique genetics, but … you're incredibly resistant to this place. I can't even count how many times I saw you cutting through here, taking your shortcuts … never long enough to get a word in …"

Sans felt the beginnings of a memory, still out of reach: Wingdings' voice in his head, distorted as if in another language altogether. He remembered drifting through a shortcut to nowhere, his brother reaching out to him, and he had only laughed …

"It didn't happen so quickly for me," said Wingdings. "I was fighting the dark for stars know how long with nothing to ground me. Imaginary things start looking pretty solid when up against nothing. Made me think some awful things about myself and … some awful things about you."

Sans' soul sank to the bottom of the pool.

"After a while, my magic started mixing with the rift, and I found a foothold. There was more I could see, more I could _do_ , if I wrapped my big bean of a brain around it."

"big _baked_ bean."

Wingdings nudged him playfully, and Sans couldn't help smiling.

"Point is, I was finally able to see through the gaps in the void. I could influence the nothing around me to reflect … something. A window in, as close to home as I could get." He looked toward where Undyne's shadow had locked Papyrus' in one arm and noogied the skeleton with the other. Then, his eyes drifted down into the earth and a basement hidden below. "I could finally see past the hallucinations into what had really happened, what it'd … really done to you."

Sans continued to watch the edge of the world, where flecks and pieces of the grey fringe peeled off and floated away into emptiness. They sat in silence a moment, each distracted by their own thoughts.

"I've never been more relieved," said Wingdings finally, "than the day you gave up on that stupid metal box."

Sans turned to him, then, his brow bone contorted like the mushroom maze in Waterfall. An impish smile split the softened contours of Wingdings' face.

"You're too boneheaded to figure it out anyway," he teased.

"heh, thanks."

"Plus I might've … left some things out, when drawing up the plans." Wingdings looked a little guilty at that.

Sans huffed and lay back flat against the snow. "guess none of it really matters anyway," he said, "now that i'm stuck here."

Wingdings laughed and eyed him over his shoulder. "You're not getting off that easily."

* * *

As you entered a room washed gold in the light through stained glass windows, your steps felt to become heavier and heavier. Your heart hammered at your ribs like a prisoner at the bars of their cell. You crept forward cautiously below the line of arches, expecting, _hoping_ someone would step out from behind one of the many stone pillars. The chirping of birds, audible through the barrier above, sang distantly into your ears.

You waited.

No one came.

It hit you, then, harder yet than it had before. No one would ever come to meet you here again. Sans … was _gone_. Really, truly gone. He had watched over you like family, led you by the hand through thick and thin … and you had led him by the hand to ruin. You clutched the locket around your neck so strongly it shook. The floor at your feet darkened in droplets from gold to orange.

Who were you anymore? Were you Frisk? Were you Chara? Even though you'd remembered your name and the life you lived before, you had never before felt as unacquainted with yourself. Despite the missing pieces, when you had been Frisk, your confidence could have taken you across mile-wide chasms without once turning back. You had known what to do, what to say, where to go. Now, you questioned everything.

The memory of who you once were and the person you had become fought like ravens over carrion.

As you stared ahead into the empty space of Judgment Hall, for the first time since losing him, your eyes spilled waterfalls down your face. You wept into your hands. You wanted Sans. You wanted him to stand there and tell you how you'd done, whether this path ahead was the right one, if you were as bad as you thought yourself to be. He would know what to say. He would know what to do. He would rustle your hair and tell you not to worry, that you'd figure it out together.

But not anymore.

Sans was dead.

The journey was over.

You looked through lakes of saltwater to the end of the golden hall.

 _You were going to be free._

* * *

"Listen, Sans," said Wingdings. "There's a lot I need to tell you and not a lot of time."

Sans knit his brow and sat up straight. "whaddya mean … ?"

"The rift keeps getting bigger. The barrier helps slow it down, but the human is on their way to Asgore and there's only a matter of time before it breaks again, one way or another. I'm doing what I can to keep the rupture from bleeding into reality, but I'm stretched so thin already … I don't know how much longer I can keep it under my thumb."

Sans noticed very suddenly that the world around them actually was shrinking. Papyrus and Undyne were no longer perceptible outside the house, and the darkness reached nearly to his doorstep. There was no more river. When he looked at his brother again, he realized just how unstable he had become. His eyes wavered; his body shook. He seemed moments away from slipping into a breakdown.

Wingdings reached out to the birdcage, still lying on its side just a few feet away, and returned it to his lap. The soul hovered peacefully inside. He looked at it a moment, hesitantly, perhaps even a little sadly.

"The rift started rewinding the clock for Asriel," Wingdings said, "but he left before claiming the part of him that mattered most, so … I held onto it." He pressed the cage earnestly into Sans' hands. "The cycle won't end if he isn't saved. He'll keep playing this game with Chara— _Frisk,_ over and over until we're all swallowed down into the void. At this point, your only chance is to finish what the kid set out to do from the start and hope there's enough time."

 _Chara?_ The wheels in Sans' head started turning. Puzzle pieces fell into place. His hands gripped the metal bars of the cage.

"Take it to him."

"okay, but how?" Sans asked. "ya act like i can just waltz on outta here through the back door, boss monster soul tucked under my arm, no big."

"That's exactly right," said Wingdings.

The remaining world of grey flipped and folded underneath them as it had when following Goner Kid. The snow disappeared, as did his house and all glimpses of Snowdin until replaced with an empty room. Across him stood a solid grey door with a plain silver knob. It was straightforward; no locks, latches, or peepholes, just a door without complications. Sans stared at it, astonished, then down again at the soul in his hands.

"can it even live long enough to reach him?" he asked.

"I've been holding its timeline together to save it from the void, just like I have for you. The cage will give me a link to keep his soul preserved, as long as you don't let go, so … _don't let go._ If you do, the cage will fall back into the void and the soul will have only seconds." He sighed and secured the metal door shut with hook in latch. "Even by taking it with you, the cage can't truly leave here. No one will notice it. To the rest of the world, it just … doesn't exist anymore."

Sans' heart sank, and so did his eyes. "take it … you're hanging back, then."

Wingdings didn't answer, but by the look on his face, Sans knew it was true. He stood, birdcage in hand. He held it close to his chest.

"what've i gotta do?"

"Make sure the human survives," said Dings, "then take them to the machine. You can't fix it without them."

"fix it? heh … thought i was 'too boneheaded.'"

Wingdings snickered, despite his distress. "Well, I mean yeah, but … nah, you caught me; that was a ripe josh. You were right about most of it. Actually, it should function just fine once you … add what's missing."

Sans faced his brother directly, expectantly.

Wingdings appeared worried, then. The longer he looked at him, the more these melted deformations of his face and hands reminded Sans of something else he'd seen. His memory called back to the day of the accident, that softening face, contoured in a forgotten splash of red … red like …

"There's a reason you couldn't fix it," Wingdings said shakily, "something I kept secret from you and … everyone."

Sans set his teeth as if to suture them shut. The darkness around them was closing in, and Wingdings trembled as if an earthquake were building pressure inside him. Soon it was only them, the door, and a patch of grey between them. The void was creeping inward slowly, only feet away.

"Why do you think the human could turn back time, but not you?" Wingdings asked uneasily. "You were both exposed to the power of the rift. If anything, _you_ should have the stronger connection. So why _not?"_

"because …" Sans' soul ached as he began to understand. He stared, wide-eyed with bated breath. The darkness crawled only inches away, now.

"Harnessing the power to turn back time takes something special, something only a pure blooded human can do. Not the kind of power found in _all_ humans, but … a unique subtype. A red soul."

The void picked at the ground beneath his feet. Sans closed his eyes and muttered, "don't say it, dings."

"The machine runs on determination, Sans. Massive, massive amounts of determination, more than can be safely extracted." He took his brother firmly by the shoulders, eyes intense and apologetic. "You have to take their soul _._ "

* * *

 **NOTES**

Sorry for the unexpected hiatus! I hope it was worth the wait, at least. :)

So I was polishing up the outline and it looks like there are actually only a few chapters left?! Maybe three more and an epilogue?! They'll be long-ish chapters, though, that's for sure. Don't worry; I haven't cut anything (if anything I've only elaborated). It just turns out I had separated the chapters a little more thinly toward the end of my outline and they worked better together **.** So instead of 20 chapters, we're looking at more like 17.

Especially since we're nearing the end, I'll do my best to be a little more timely about updates. I'm still finishing up a side gig I took on outside work and once that's out of the way my time should open up a little more.

I hope you enjoyed! If you have thoughts or feelings, I love hearing them. :)

 **Next Time:** *hums Bergentrückung*


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